


Blowing Through The Night

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Complete, Detective Noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-20
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 04:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny Gold PI works out of a dive of an office over a Chinese laundromat. When a man comes knocking, looking for help to find his daughter, Gold has more than one reason for taking on the case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So. My brain saw Robert Carlyle in 50s style clothes and a hat, sitting in a darkened office. And this story was born.

I'll never forget the day.

It was mid-afternoon, a regular Tuesday in July, and the ink was still drying on the four hundred and fifty-seventh mark in my book. The count was important. It made it impossible to forget, not when the ink shone black and wet each and every day at three in the afternoon.

The office was hot, the air dry, and the fan whirled with a rat-a-rat-a sound. Too hot for a smoke, even with the window wedged high, and the shutters brought low. 

The office. What a word for a box that had just room enough to fit the desk and chairs. The wallpaper was rolling down in lank brown strips, like a parcel half-unwrapped. The wall underneath was stained yellow. Smoke or water or both. It didn't matter, as long as it kept the rates low.

Even the streets were pretty quiet outside, not a soul on the street.

It was too damn hot for anyone to be making trouble.

That was when he knocked.

The glass rattled in the door. It was frosted glass, and the shape of the man was little more than a shadow. Usually, the only people who knocked were delivery guys or the landlord, who liked to come in from time to time, to act like he was tough. He was a short guy. The man outside was broad.

I closed up the book, slid it into the drawer of the desk beside the sealed bottle of bourbon.

"Come in."

He was an average Joe, more than forty, less than fifty, and it looked like his suit was almost as old as he was. The elbows were patched, the sleeves frayed, and what was visible of his shirt was soaked with sweat. He held his hat in one hand, a thick envelope under his other arm.

Like anyone who walked through that door, he looked terrified.

"Are," he began, then cleared his throat, deepening his voice. Impressions, you see, are everything. He didn't want to sound like a frightened kid. "Are you Gold?"

"That's what it says by the door." I folded my hands on the desk. "What can I do for you?"

He closed the door behind him, stood there for a few seconds. No wonder, with all the stories. The Ice Maiden has a sharp pen and wasn't afraid to slander anyone in her rag, but in my case, she made an exception with the truth. 

He finally turned and walked to the bow-legged chair on the far side of the desk, sat. The chair creaked beneath him. "My daughter," he said. "She's in trouble."

It was almost too easy to turn him away. "I don't deal with troublesome dames."

"Please!" He leaned forward, put his hand on the edge of the desk, like a man clinging to a life-raft. "She's a good girl, my Rose. She's a good girl, but she got caught up with the wrong kind of people. She can't come home."

"Can't?"

He set his hat aside, opened the envelope, and pulled out a letter. It was typed, formal for a young girl to send to her old man. I ran my eyes over it, then slid it back across the desk to him. It was pretty cut and dried.

"She says she's busy working."

He shook his head, his jowls shaking. "My Rose would never type a letter to me," he said. "She would write it by hand. She would never write it to 'father'. She always calls me Pa." He looked across the desk, defiant. "She's in trouble."

I pulled the letter back, looked at it again. If the girl was writing in code, it wasn't something obvious. "Why not take it to the cops?" 

He looked up, his expression one of a man at the end of a very short rope. "They won't help," he said. "They told me she got herself into it. They can't get her out."

That was a first. A missing person was a pretty serious affair. "What aren't you telling me?"

The man looked across at me. His pale eyes were tired. "I told you," he said. "She's in trouble. She works for Gina Royle."

I set the page down and got up. He looked like he wanted to run, but give him credit where it's due. He didn't. I took out a smoke, offered him one. He shook his head, so I lit up. It was too damn hot, but sometimes, when you can't drink, only a cigarillo will do. 

Gina Royle.

The name meant hardly anything, just a dame to anyone who only heard the name from the high-class newssheets.

Once upon a time, the Royles had been a spit in the ocean, a bunch of petty crooks and hustlers. If Gina's father had had his way, they would have stayed that way. He wasn't ambitious, just a two-bit conman with a trustworthy smile and a firm handshake. 

His wife, on the other hand, would have stolen fire from the Gods with one hand, and sold Heaven to the Devil with the other. She had big plans and ideas, and she had taken a scrambling mess of thieves and turned them into something much more efficient and much more deadly.

Gina was definitely her mother's daughter.

I watched the glow in the smoke. "Which precinct did you go to?"

"Fifth."

The smoke curled and writhed in the air. Fifth. Of course it would be the fifth. That was the east side. That was Royle teritory. 

"Why that one?"

The man fumbled with the envelope again, pulled out a book. It was his daughter's. No man would ever have used something so floral. "The name," he said. "In the letter, she mentioned Greg. I wanted to find him." He opened the book, an address book, held it out in a shaking hand. 

The book was thin-paged, a lady's book, and Rose's hand was elegant, swirling.

It was the words, though, that screamed out.

"Greg Astor, Fifth precinct."

The man nodded. "I wanted to find him," he said again. "I thought he might know. But they said he couldn't see me."

I drew on the cigarillo. It was shaking in my hand. Goddamn it. I remembered Astor when he was a rookie, keen as mustard and making all the mistakes in the world because of it. He learned, though, and quickly. Last I heard, he was undercover, but details were shady. 

"You won't find him anywhere you can talk to him. He was fished out of the river last week. Beaten and shot in the head."

The man went white as fresh cream. "Christ!"

"Your girl might be in more trouble than you figured." 

I returned to the seat, grinding out the smoke in the ashtray. The letter and address book lay side by side on the desk. She had to be in a world of trouble, if she knew Astor. If he had been caught as a mole, and she was working with him, she could already be dead.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus H Christ." 

He was going grey and the last thing I needed was some dumb broad's father dropping dead in my office. I didn't intend to give the icy Miss Bianco any more material for her column. The bourbon had been in the drawer for going on a year and a half, but I broke the seal, poured a measure into a dusty glass and pushed it across the desk.

"Drink it."

He took it in a shaking hand, downed it in one go, handed it back. "Jesus," he said again, quieter.

"I'm not saying I'm going to take your case, Mr..."

"French."

"French." I refilled the glass, pushed it back to him. "But you're going to tell me every damn thing you know about your daughter's involvement with the Royles. When she started working for them, what she does, how she got her foot in the door."

It was a simple tale. Rose French was a smart girl, and she had a way with words and numbers. She was picked up as a secretary at a local office, then worked her way up the ranks, until she was pretty much running the show when the boss was out of town.

Gina Royle didn't like other people having the best toys. She heard of Rose's skill, and French's sweet little girl was poached away into a business that was much worse than she could possibly have imagined.

"She used to come by every few weeks," French said, staring into the depths of the glass. His hands weren't shaking so much anymore. "She couldn't tell me much of what she was doing, but she said she's met someone. She said he was a real gent. Then she stopped coming around. There were letters for a while, and then that." He nodded to the letter on the desk. He looked up. "Can you help me?" 

He had jack. From his clothes, his hair, hell, everything about him, I could tell he didn't have two cents to rub together. He was the first person to walk through the door in going on a month and a half. The rent had to be paid somehow, and you can't pay it with thin air.

"I don't work for free, Mr French."

French nodded unhappily. "I figured," he said. "I don't have much, but I have to get my Rosie out of there. Anything I have is yours. Just help me get her back."

There's nothing as pitiful as a father who has lost a kid, except maybe a father who lost their kid through no fault of their own. French was one of those fathers. Nothing left but the clothes on his back, and willing to give that if that was what it took.

I held out my hand to him. "I'll take your case, French."

He stared at it, then shook it. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Not until I knew she was alive.

 

______________________________________

 

The breeze off the coast was bracing.

The tide was high enough that you could taste the spray if you stood close to the edge of the boardwalk. It was almost bearable, the heat, when you had the fresh scent of the sea washing over you.

I pushed my hands deep in my pockets and waited.

There are some people who don’t like to be around dangerous men. There are other people who do it for a living. Sometimes, the latter are dangerous men themselves. Others are like Phil Shepherd, the all-around good guy, a regular Captain America, who likes to think he can save the whole world single-handed. 

Trouble is that men like Shepherd know that they can’t be seen in cahoots with the dangerous kind, which is why we had to meet at the boardwalk, heading towards sundown when no one else in their right mind would still be about.

“Fresh breeze.”

I didn’t look at him. He was everything I’d hated when I was younger: tall, strong, athletic, charisma by the bucket. “Yeah.” The temptation to pull out my cigarette case was growing, but the wind would just puff out any matches. 

“You needed information?”

I watched the gulls wheel overhead. “Greg Astor. What do you know about it?”

He was silent for a long while. “You saw the coverage?”

“Your friend isn’t exactly known for muffling her type-writer.” We both knew who I was referring to. “I read what I could find: beaten, shot once in the head, close-range, dumped in the river. No clues.” I glanced sidelong at him. He looked like he’d been chipped from stone, his blue eyes hard for once. “Or were there?”

“No clues,” he replied, lifting his hand to smooth his collar as it flipped and tossed in the wind. “He’d been picked clean.” He looked at me. “What I mentioned last time. We think he was caught out.”

“And some,” I agreed. “Was he working for Gina Royle?”

Shepherd stared at me. “How the hell did you figure that?”

It was hard not to smile. The Assistant District Attorney liked to think he had his fingers in every pie, but once in a while, he could be caught by surprise. “Let’s just say I’ve taken a case and there are a few ties coming up between Astor and the Royle.”

“Damn it, Gold,” Shepherd said, rubbing his brow. “Only four people were meant to know about it. One of them is dead, one is missing, and the other is suspected of being a snitch for the Royles.”

“And you.”

He scowled. “Yeah,” he said. “He was in there nearly six months. We thought he was getting somewhere, then he washed up by the docks. They had beaten the seven shades of hell out of him before they killed him.”

“Torture?”

Shepherd nodded grimly. “We think so,” he said. “Astor was a good guy, but there’s only so much a man can take. He knew some of our sources. So far, nothing has happened to them, but he was a bloody mess, Gold. No man could have taken that.”

“A man can take as much as the hell he wants,” I retorted. “Astor wouldn’t have ratted on anyone else. He signed on to uphold the law. He wouldn’t have let his last act in the world be the opposite of that.”

“I hope to God you’re right,” Shepherd said. He pulled out a cigarette case, polished silver, and offered a smoke. I declined, but he put one to his lips, then cupped his hand around it, struck a match, and inhaled the first coil of smoke. Finally, he looked at me from beneath the brim of his hat. “You said you had a case linked to this. Are you sure it’s a good idea, going up against the Royles again?”

Of course it wasn’t a good idea, given everything that happened the last time, but there were bills and rent, and if I was lucky, there might even be enough left over to get a lawyer again. Not likely, it was true. French was poor. The only chance I had was if a rich, undiscovered relative hopped off the mortal coil and saved my ass with a fortune. 

“A case is a case,” I replied. 

“The details?”

He got the canned version, without French’s anecdotes about his girl. He knew what I meant about the connection. It seemed all too coincidental that the French girl was verging on being Gina’s right-hand woman when Astor was uncovered and killed. He drew on the cigarette, staring out at the sea, and I waited.

“Think he got soft on her?” Shepherd finally said.

“Could be, but I don’t think so.” I remembered Astor. The job always came first, no matter how many dames threw themselves at him. “More likely, he saw a damsel in distress and tried to help her out. She could have turned, maybe ratted him out.”

“Or they both screwed up,” Shepherd agreed. “You going after her?”

“Not like I have a choice,” I said. “The landlord wants his rent, and I sure as hell can’t afford the price of a lawyer without some kind of work.”

“Gold,” he said.

“Don’t even go there, Phil,” I cut across him. “Charming as your offer is, you’ve got a post to keep, and you’re no use to me if you’re just my attorney. The Royles started this, and as much as I want things back the way they were, if you step down, we sure as hell aren’t going to finish it.”

“You are a stubborn son of a gun,” Shepherd said. He flicked away the butt, and it caught and whirled in the foam of the tide. “Have you seen him lately?”

I watched the butt drag in and out on the current. “Not in a month. The Sisters aren’t exactly welcoming.”

Shepherd was silent for a while. “I could drop by,” he said. “Take a message. See how he is.”

“Not a good idea.” I groped in my pocket, found my cigarette case in the place that my flask used to be. It was still windy, but something was better than nothing. Shepherd scratched a match, and I cupped my hand around the cigarette, drawing on it until it glowed. “He’d worry, and bust out again. They don’t like that.”

“Way I hear it,” Shepherd said, dryly, “they don’t like much.”

“Rules and regulations from on high.” It hurt like a blade to think about it. I sucked on the smoke, drawing it deep, and letting it out slow. Goddamn bible-thumpers had lost the notion of loving their enemy. I didn’t want or need to think on it. I had a case. It was a start. “This girl. I need to find out about her.”

“I’ve got ears in there,” Shepherd said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

“I don’t need to tell you to let them know she could be a threat.”

Shepherd nodded. “They know to trust no one, especially not someone on the inside.”

I knew better than to ask for names or identities. There were people who had been in with the Royles for years, but only their handlers knew who they were, if that. It took a hell of a lot to survive there, where the first slant of betrayal would end up with people sharing Astor’s fate.

The last of the cigarette glowed, the smoke curling around my face before the wind carried it off. “I need anything you can get. As much as possible. If she’s not the one who sold Astor out, she might be an in.”

“Information the usual way?”

I nodded.

We both had precautions to take. 

Shepherd touched the brim of his hat. “You watch your back, Gold. You have a powerful enemy.”

I laughed quietly. “What else could the bitch take from me?” I asked. With a flick of my finger, the butt of my smoke joined his, swirling in the eddies. I turned around and walked away, leaving him standing on the boardwalk.

 

_____________________________________________

 

Shepherd was as good as his word.

Three days after we met on the boardwalk, the telephone rang once. 

I took my hat and my keys, and headed down to central station. The building was grand, more like an upstate mansion than a station. There were lockers there, newly fitted only a couple of years back. They were still gleaming and polished.

Number twenty-six was my locker.

Only one other person had a key for it, and it sure as hell wasn’t someone I knew.

Shepherd might have been a honour-and-justice kind of guy, but there was always more going on behind the pretty face than he ever let on. To get to the rank of Assistant District Attorney was a big deal at his age, and that showed, plain as day, that he got things done.

There were people about. There always were, no matter what time of day you went to the station, but I was just a guy, collecting my things from a locker. The hinges creaked and the light cut in over a briefcase. It was plain, brown, the edges worn. Something that wouldn’t look out of place in my hand.

I took it, locked the door again, and walked away.

There are some things it’s impossible to ignore, and being watched is one of those things. I got used to it. People tend to keep a close eye on the ones they consider a liability. Even before everything went to hell, if the Chief wasn’t watching, then I could be sure that there were eyes from the other side.

You make enemies, when you uphold the law, and nowadays, the crime syndicates are the kind of enemies a man doesn’t want to have. Times change fast. 

Even five years ago, it was a whole other world. The Bianco family were old-school, real gentlemen. Murderous? Of course. But they didn’t kill for the hell of it. They got further with a quietly-spoken threat and well-placed extortion. They kept their people on a tight leash, and it worked as much as a syndicate ever could.

Then, Leo, self-proclaimed King of the Biancos, was taken out in a hit. It took the city by surprise, because no one touched the Biancos, and suddenly they were falling apart. Petty rivalries sprang up between brothers, and while they fought for control, the Royles were on the up-and-up.

Henry Royle was the boss. Everyone said it, but no one believed it. The Royle women were the ones to watch out for. His wife, Coraline, had died before the war, though no one knew the details, and that was when Gina, her pride and joy, stepped up to the mark.

What Coraline had taken and shaped, Gina honed into a blade.

The rest of the Biancos who were considered a threat died in a spate of accidents over the next couple of years. Nothing could ever be proven, of course, and Gina Royle was always one of the first to send condolences to the family. All the same, there were always suspicions, which Henry Royle brushed aside with his trust-me smile.

Enemies were easily made when you got too close to them.

I had been working on breaking the Royles open for years when a perfect snitch fell into my lap in the shape of Sid Glass, one of the Royle grifters, who was looking for an out after screwing with the wrong people. The information was reliable, the leads solid, and it was all going too well, when he backed out. He should have just walked away, but it was too close, and damn him, if he wasn’t the key to bringing them down.

I should have let him walk.

If I had, I wouldn’t be working out of a cheap dive above a Chinese Laundromat, and things wouldn’t be all shot to hell. 

The Royles don’t forget when you go after them. 

The story was on the cover of every news sheet in the city. Despite the subject matter, even Eve Bianco, Leo’s girl and chief reporter for The Tribune, covered it. The pictures were on the cover of every paper, and I’m pretty damn sure there’s not a person in Storybrooke who doesn’t know every goddamn detail. 

I got used to being watched. 

Once, it was because the chief knew a liability when he saw one.

Now, people are just waiting for the booze-hound ex-cop to lose it again. 

You get good at ignoring it, when it happens all the goddamn time. 

I returned to the office. The window was still wedged open with an old tobacco tin. It’s buckling, the corners cracking, but it’d do for now. I turned the shutters down and sat at the desk, shedding hat and jacket, and lay the briefcase in front of me.

Inside, there were two envelopes, one small, one large. The small one contained a typed letter with no names. Shepherd always was far too smart. There were no known photographs of the girl, but it was being worked on. The case needed to be back in the locker by midday the next day. All the files had to be returned. 

The other envelope contained as much information was available. There wasn’t much I didn’t know already: the girl was practically Gina Royle’s private secretary. She dealt with all the paperwork and filing for Gina’s legitimate business interests. Whether she had her fingers in the other matters wasn’t clear. She went everywhere that Gina went, and from the sounds of things, was turning into as much of a hard-ass as her boss. 

There was a summary from a meeting where she had been responsible for the laying off of a dozen men, and when one of them had dared to call her on it, she verbally tore so many strips out of him that he all but ran from the room.

There was no sign of Gina settling down yet, and she was already pushing her mid-thirties. If she didn’t want a blood successor, maybe Rose French was being trained up to fill that space, or maybe she was just another employee. 

If she really went everywhere her boss went, then the solution was simple. To get eyes on the girl, get a measure of her, I just had to get somewhere I knew the Royles would be. Trouble was that they didn’t usually like seeing an old enemy surfacing again, no matter how disgraced he was.

There were a stack of the week’s newssheets in a pile by the desk. I knew I’d seen something about a gala, something celebrating the opening of a new rail route. 

The Royles were big in transport, despite their shady beginnings, but that was all down to Coraline’s father. Miller’s Haulage dealt with almost forty percent of the heavy cargo haulage down the eastern seaboard. Her brothers didn’t survive long enough to get a look-in, and when the business ended up in her hands, no one was surprised. 

I found the article easily enough. It was in two days, and it was an open event, which usually meant the big shots in the city would be all in one place, showing off their suits, their clothes, their wives, their jewels, their egos. 

Even if everyone knew my face, it wouldn’t be a trial to find a quiet corner and watch. It was the one shindig where everyone who was anyone would be.

Shepherd was right when he said it was a bad idea to mess around with the Royles. The last time had been one hell of a screw up. But this time, this wasn’t about the Royles. This was about a lost daughter, and the fact it overlapped into Royle territory was just a coincidence. If finding her meant finding either a weak link in the Royle chain or a way in, it’s not like I was the one who asked for the case. It came to me.

The clock on the desk chimed.

Three o’clock already.

The files and newssheets were put aside, and I took out the book, opening it to the right page. With a fountain pen, I marked down the four hundred and sixtieth mark in a diagonal cut against the previous four. It gleamed black and wet, like blood in the movies. 

More than a month.

I pushed the chair back, shoved the contents of the case in the side cupboard of the desk, then took up my hat and coat again. To hell with what they wanted. They had their rules, I had my own. I had every goddamn right to see him.

It took close to an hour to get where I wanted to be, out of town, with the industrial plants on one side and the edge of the countryside on the other.

The building looked more like a government facility than a Church-run organisation, with smoke-blackened bricks and tall, narrow windows. Every window gleamed, no doubt polished by the people they kept inside. The high walls around the building - edged with broken glass to either keep people in or out - gave it the feel of a prison.

I parked by the sidewalk, in the shade of the walls. It was better to do that, than come back to a stove on wheels. It wasn’t a place I ever wanted to come to, but I knew the walls better than I knew my own apartment. I knew every inch of them, every place where I’d tried to bust in, when they’d turned me away. 

Shepherd was the only reason I didn’t keep trying.

It was after the fourth attempt, when the Mother Superior was really getting pissed, and he made it clear that if I kept it up, they wouldn’t hesitate to let all hell break loose. God’s wrath was nothing compared to a pissed nun.

I straightened my tie, checked it in the mirror, smoothed my jacket, tilted my hat, then headed for the gates. 

They were tall iron things, too narrow for even the skinniest of kids to slip through, and all spiked along the top. The sign by the gates made me sick to the gut. It did every time. The Sacred Heart Home for Orphans was neither sacred or a home. From everything I’d heard, it was the first step to getting kids ordained into the church to keep them from the sins of the world, and no kid should ever be forced into that.

I yanked the bell, then put my hands in my pockets, closing one around my keys, the other around my cigarette case. Anything was better than putting them to other uses.

A young nun emerged from the heavy front doors, trotting down the steps. “Hello, sir,” she said, smiling. “Can I help you?”

She must have been new in town.

“I’m here to see my son.”

Her smile faded. New enough not to recognise me, but here long enough to have heard the stories. “I-I see,” she said. “Mother Superior says that no visitors are allowed in.”

“The hell you say.”

The Sister went white. “Sir! Please don’t swear!”

I squeezed my hand around the keys. The pain made it easier to keep control, to focus on the frightened girl in front of me. “I’ll swear if I damn well please, Sister,” I said. “My son is in there. I want to see him, and I sure as hell know he wants to see me.”

She stared at me, all wide brown eyes and fright, then turned and fled back into the building, leaving the door open behind her.

It was less than five minutes before the Mother Superior emerged.

She walked down the steps, hands clasped calmly in front of her. “Mr Gold, you know you aren’t welcome here.”

“And I know I don’t want your people teaching my son scripture, but we can’t all get what we want, can we?”

She smiled placidly. “Well, you certainly can’t.”

Sometimes, it would be a great pleasure to be a real bastard. Smacking a dame is bad enough, so I guess it would be even worse to want to smack a nun. The smug broad was only that brave because there was a gate between us.

“He’s my son.”

“By blood, I won’t disagree,” she said, bringing her arms up to fold them across her chest. “You know you don’t have a leg to stand on, Gold. It’s your fault he ended up here. Not mine. And it’s your fault you’re not getting in here. Not mine.”

One of my hands was out of my pocket and wrapped around one of the bars of the gate in a second. “You have no right to keep him from me. I know he wants to see me.”

She stepped closer to the gate, so close that I could almost touch her through the railings. “I am responsible for putting the welfare of the child first,” she said, her voice ice cold. “If that means keeping him out of reach of a man who is known to be a violent alcoholic, even if he wanted to see you, then so be it.”

The bars were cold and hard, both hands to them now. “Just let me see him. I want to know he’s doing okay.”

For a moment, her expression softened. “Of course he is,” she said quietly. “He’s safe here.”

I could read between the lines well enough.

He couldn’t be safe if he was with me. That was what she thought. That was what everyone and their mother thought. No one had ever stopped to ask to Bennie what he thought. He knew for a fact he was the one person in the world I would never hurt, but the word of a thirteen year old counted for squat.

“Give me a minute, Sister,” I asked. I hated to sound desperate, but it had been a month. A goddamn month. “Just one minute.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Gold,” she said, stepping back from the gates. “The last time you visited, he got so worked up that he tried to break out. He could have been hurt. We can’t risk that again, not when he’s been doing so well.”

“Break out? You dumb bitch, this isn’t a prison! You have no right to keep him locked up here!”

She narrowed her eyes. “And let you be such a good influence on him?” she said, her voice sharp and cold. “Get out of here, Gold, and don’t come back. Shepherd might have put in a good word for you, but if you come sniffing around again, I won’t hesitate to call the police and have you arrested for harassment.”

She wasn’t messing around.

I pried my fingers from the bars, tipped my hat to her, giving her more courtesy than she deserved. “If you give enough of a damn to tell him,” I said, “let him know I have a case. As soon as I can hire a lawyer, I’ll be taking him home.”

“I’ll tell him you came by,” she agreed, “but I’m not going to let him get his hopes up, for you to disappoint him again.”

I struck the gate, open-palmed. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t give a damn. “I won’t disappoint him,” I said, turning and walking away. It felt better to have the last word, to not let her hear the catch in my throat, or see just how close to the bone she was cutting.

I sat heavily on the hood of my car, taking off my hat and smoothing my hair down. If I drove now, I would hit someone out of spite. Better to calm the hell down before getting behind the wheel. 

“Hey!” 

The familiar voice made me look up. “Bennie?”

“Up here, dad!”

I looked up, up above the wall, in one of the high windows. Bennie had it cracked open as much as he could. The little nun was behind him, the first one who had met me at the gate. She was playing lookout for him.

“Hey, son.” If grief makes your throat tighten, it’s a spit in a bucket compared to what happiness would do for you. My voice was cracking like an old lady’s, but he could hear me clear enough. “You doing okay?”

“Bored as hell,” he called back, then giggled. Rebelling right in front of a nun. That was my boy. “You can’t come in?”

“They think I won’t wipe my feet,” I replied, trying not to think on the fact they were keeping him locked in and me locked out. “I got a case, son. Something to get me back on my feet.”

Worry and joy crossed his face. “You won’t get in trouble?”

I laughed quietly. “You know I never go looking for it.”

The nun tugged on his arm. “Dad, I gotta go! You be safe!”

“You too…”

He was gone before I could finish speaking, and I slipped into my car, pulling away from the Orphanage. Mother Superior was probably on her way, and getting him in trouble by hanging around wasn’t what I wanted for my boy. He hated it there enough already. He didn’t need any more reasons.

I felt better for seeing him, but it never lasted. It only made the place where he was missing ache even more. It would be so much easier to deal with it all, if I had a drink in my hand, but that was a big part of the cause. 

The girl had to be my distraction now. It was a case, and a case was money, and money was a lawyer, and a lawyer was the thing I needed to argue my defence and get my boy back. The first step was the girl. I would find the girl, and it would all go from there.

 

_________________________________________

 

The gala was just as big and as lavish as expected.

All the richest people in Storybrooke had gathered at the grand Hyperion Hotel for the event. There were flashbulbs going off in all directions. The cost of the food alone would have fed half of the city for a week, and the cost of clothes and jewels? I didn’t even want to think about it. 

It wasn’t hard to slip into the building itself, since the hotel still had guests, but the hall where the gala was being held wasn’t so easy. No one carried an invitation, but it looked like the thugs at the door were there to keep anyone who wasn’t rich enough or recognised out. 

It was one hell of a surprise when one of them nudged the other as I approached, and they both stepped aside to let me in. Some people were smart enough to remember the old adage about keeping friends close but enemies closer.

Inside the hall, it was like walking into a Faberge egg, all jewels and gold. Tables framed the hall, piled high with all the best luxuries that could be imported by Miller’s Haulage. There was a band on the stage at the far end of the hall, playing loud enough to be heard, but nowhere near loud enough to drown anyone out. There was even a vacant dance floor.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Shepherd’s voice was close by, but I didn’t turn. I kept my eyes on the chandeliers, as if admiring a gaudy mess of crystal stuck together with wire. “I have a case, remember,” I said quietly. “And the lady should be here somewhere.”

Shepherd sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered as he strode past me, heading for the gaggle of reporters. What a big surprise. Poor Phil held such a flame for Miss Bianco, even if he pretended otherwise.

I found a seat at an abandoned table. Most people were too busy talking business or pleasure to pay much attention, and the ones who did notice were the ones who no doubt already knew I was here. I watched familiar faces passing by. 

All the leaders of business were there: Tony Black of Caspian shipping, the three Hampton brothers of Hampton construction, Timothy Jefferson who ran the leading Fashion House and Milliners in town, even Cassandra Ellison who had made a name in taking rags and making exceptional clothing out of them.

Politicians were visible too.

Mayor Hart and his wife were mingling. Sycophants followed them around, laughing at the Mayor’s joke or admiring his wife’s scarlet dress. No one would have the nerve to tell her she looked like a tramp, no matter how true it was. The Harts were tough, formidable, and if rumours were to be believed, sometime affiliates of the Royles.

It wasn’t that all high ranking officials approved of the Royles, but business was business, and campaign donations were campaign donations. If your bedfellow got up to dirty shenanigans when you weren’t looking, how could you be held accountable for that?

By one of the buffet tables, District Attorney Orville King was talking to his daughter. She was one of the few rising female stars of Storybrooke politics. Too many people said it was daddy’s name getting her attention. If they wanted to think that, more fool them. Abigail King was one of the sharpest women I’d met, and if she got onto any of the councils, I’d be the last man to stand against her. 

Her father and I never saw eye to eye, even before he was the one to take my badge. Not that he was a bad guy. Not in the least. He was one of the better ones in town, and when he stood by his morals, he stood by them to the death. He disapproved of my methods, said so to my face, and I could respect him for that. Not like him, but no one said you had to like the people you respected.

Someone set a glass down on the table beside me.

“How are you enjoying my party, Johnny?”

I didn’t even have to turn to know exactly who was standing right beside me. “Miss Royle,” I said, turning all the same. There was a scotch on the rocks on the table. She knew it was my drink of choice, the bitch. 

Gina Royle leaned her hip against the table, her black silk dress hitching up, her dark hair in elaborate curls. She looked every inch a lady, which goes to show you can dress anything up and make it look glamorous. “I wondered if you would swing by,” she said. “Been a while since you’ve shown your face.”

“You know how things are.”

Her ruby-red mouth curved in a smile. “Busy?”

“Busy enough.”

She traced her fingertips on the tabletop. “I heard about your boy. Barney, wasn’t it?”

“Ben,” I replied tersely. Of course she knew. Even if she hadn’t had a hand in my own crime, I knew she sure as hell had whispered enough to the Sisters at Sacred Heart of the poor child who was in danger. Shepherd let that slip when he came to collect Ben’s clothes. “He’s doing fine. Getting a good schooling.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Gina drew her skirt to one side, folding down elegantly to sit in one of the empty chairs. She took a cigarette case from her garter, drawing out a cigarette between two fingertips, and lifting it to her lips. “You got a light?”

I took out my zippo, offered her the flame. It didn’t matter who you hated as long as you smiled to their face and played nice when the cameras were there. 

She blew a plume of smoke into the air. “How long is it since you saw him?”

I shrugged, flicking the lighter closed, then open. “A while.”

“Pity you don’t have a lawyer to defend you,” she murmured, then drew on the cigarette again. The tip glowed like hellfire. “You know we have the Royle Trust foundation for helping people out, Gold. People who can’t get by themselves.” She smiled, all sweetness and poison. “You just need to ask.”

“I’d sooner stick my hand in a tiger’s mouth,” I replied, still smiling. “You can wear all the silk and diamonds you like, Gina, but you’re still nothing more than a two-bit thug who got lucky.” I stood up. “The day I come to you is the day hell freezes over.”

She leaned back on the chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Didn’t you hear?” she said with a smirk. “The weather’s meant to turn any day now.” She blew another feather of smoke my way. “Don’t forget, Gold. You could have your boy back.” She unfolded from the chair, all heels and stockings and tits, and leaned closer. “All you have to do is say please.”

“Does that mean the same as go to hell?” I asked, smiling tightly. 

She leaned closer, brushing a red-wine scented kiss to my cheek. “I’ll have your hat and scarf ready for the big chill, dear.” She drew back, still smiling, her dark eyes gleaming. “Enjoy your drink.”

I kept my hands by my sides. They were curled into tight knots, so balled up that my arms ached, but anything was better than punching the host of the evening right in the chops. Dame she might be, but lady she certainly wasn’t.

Our little conversation had not gone unnoticed.

I wasn’t about to leave, not when I still had a job to do, but sitting in the sidelines, out of the way was tempting. 

There were some chairs scattered by the wall, near the dance floor, but away from the buzz of conversation. I staked my claim, taking out a cigarette and lighting up. I kept watching in case French’s girl came by. He had given me a handful of photographs, but not a one of them was less than ten years old. The difference between a round-cheeked teenager and a woman might not have seemed like much, but it could make all the difference in the world.

By and by, the dance floor filled, as the buffet emptied. 

Since that area was empty now, and there was no debt owed to Gina over a couple of snacks, I headed for the tables. As luck would have it, Shepherd had the same idea, though he was carrying two plates, which suggested his evening was going a hell of a lot better than mine.

“Any luck?”

I stacked a plate. “Not so far.”

“What was Gina asking about?”

I slanted a look at him. “She was trying to get me on side.” Shepherd swore, a rare enough thing that I had to grin. “Come on, Phil. You didn’t think she’d push me down as far as she has just to leave me here? I know a hell of a lot about the investigations into their business. Of course she’d want me to join them.”

Shepherd looked at me full on. “She offered to get you Bennie back, didn’t she?”

“Of course she did.” I met his eyes. “I told her where she could shove it.”

“That was only her first offer, Gold.”

“Then she’s not as smart as she likes to think,” I said. “She went in too high.” 

Shepherd picked at the platters on the table. “You okay?”

“It takes more than a jumped-up tramp in an expensive dress to bother me.” It might have been a lie. I wasn’t sure. I knew he wasn’t. I picked up my plate. “Enjoy the Ice Queen’s company. Ask her to be nice for once. For you… who knows? She might.”

I could see the back of Phil’s neck redden, but he didn’t reply as I walked past him.

I was so busy looking around for a spare seat I didn’t notice a broad coming in the other direction. We ran into each other head on, and the plate flipped up, cascading food all over my suit and the front of her dress.

“Goddamn it!”

“Oh, I am so sorry!”

I looked up to meet a pair of the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, framed by dark lashes. She was a little thing, in a low-backed blue silk number, her blonde curls pinned neat and tight around her head. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

She smiled, her lips red, but nowhere near as chippy as Gina’s. “There’s a sideroom near the doors,” she said. “How about we get you cleaned up?”

I glanced down at her dress, splashed here and there with grease. I knew my eyes stayed there just a moment too long, but the dress fitted her just right, and it was impossible not to take a good, hard look. “I’m not the only one who needs a cleanup, Miss.”

She laughed, embarrassed, and her cheeks even flushed. “I do, don’t I?” she said, taking my arm, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “If we both look like we don’t give a damn, then maybe no one will notice the mess.”

All I could think was that as long as she kept smiling, no one would even be giving her dress a second look. 

We got to the room in no time. It wasn’t much more than a room for the serving staff to clean up in. There was a basin and a faucet. She fetched a cloth from it at once, setting to work at cleaning my coat before I could even take it off. 

“It’s going to stain,” she said apologetically, then reached up and pushed the coat from my shoulders to start to work on the vest and shirt beneath. I’m not saying I’m easy, but it had been well over a year and a half since I had even looked at a woman, let alone touched one.

“You got a name?”

She looked up with those bright baby blues, smiled. “Most people call me Bella,” she said, lifting a hand to brush a blonde curl behind her ear. Bella. Beauty. I can see that. “What about you, Mr…?”

“Gold,” I replied, watching her dab at my shirt. The air was cooling the damp fabric, and it only got worse, when she leaned close enough for her breath to warm it, as she worked on my collar. “Johnny Gold.”

She drew back then, just a little. “The Johnny Gold?” There was something that wasn’t fear in her eyes. “The one who beat up that snitch?”

“Yeah.” I should have left her then, walked away, but she was between me and the door and there was still gravy on my pants, and a man can hope.

She continued to brush at the stains with a firm hand, so close that all I could smell was her perfume, something with jasmine. She moved further down my shirt, but her eyes never left my face. “Why?” she finally asked.

“Why what, Miss?”

The cloth paused right above the waistband of my pants. God, if that wasn’t distracting, nothing was. “Why did you do it? All the papers said that he had information and you tried to beat it out of him. Is that true?”

“You could say so,” I said. “We had a deal. I held up my side. He chickened out and bolted.”

“And you beat the hell out of him,” she finished. The cloth moved in a sudden stroke down the front of my pants. I put my hands in fists by my side, swallowed hard, tried to think of anything but the woman in the stained dress in front of me. “You must really hate the Royles to do that.”

“And what if I do?”

She smiled suddenly, stepped closer and her body was right against mine, so tight even a slip of paper couldn’t fit between. “Well,” she said, dropping the wet cloth and replacing it with her hand. “I think we could get along.”


	2. Chapter 2

The dame was trouble with a capital T.

I knew it when I let her mop at me with a damp cloth in a hotel’s side room. I knew it when she kissed me and tasted like smokes and strawberries. I knew it when she didn’t think twice about leading me to the elevator to take me back to her room. 

No decent lady would do that, not if she wanted to keep her reputation.

The room was a suite with its own bathroom and even a couch and balcony. The sheets were silk, the drapes velvet, and she laid herself down as if she belonged there. She might have been trouble, but no man could say no when a dame like that crooked her finger, smiled, and invited him to her bed. We left a trail of clothing from the door all the way across the room. 

She was standing by the window in a silk robe with a smoke when she asked the question I’d been waiting to hear all night. I was propped against the headboard of the bed, the sheet across my hips, my own cigarette burning down little by little in my hand. 

“So, what’s your game, Mr Gold?” She didn’t look around as she spoke, but she pushed the curtain back, and the light cut in across her profile. She could have been an angel, if she wasn’t already a whore. 

“My game, doll?”

She looked over with those bright blue eyes. She wasn’t as neat anymore. Her lips were pink instead of red and her hair was unruly around her face. It suited her better than the stiff curls of before. “You know what I mean. You’re a smart man, Gold. You wouldn’t come anywhere near the Royles unless you had some new play.”

I let one side of my mouth turn up. “Well done, doll,” I murmured, sitting up and grinding out the cigarette in the ashtray on the cabinet. “You took longer than I thought.”

Her cigarette stopped a hair’s breadth from her lips, and she frowned slowly. “Excuse me?”

“Most of the girls set up to entrap me don’t go all the way,” I replied, sitting up and pushing the sheet back. She had the audacity to act like she was embarrassed, turning her face away, like a naked man was a big deal. “Got to say I don’t mind your commitment.”

“I’m not here to entrap you,” she said, staring at the window as I picked up my pants. “That wasn’t what this was about.”

I walked over to her, running my hand over her backside through her robe. She turned on me with a temper, her blue eyes narrowed to slits.

“Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart,” I said. She had a pretty mouth so I kissed it once more, and pushed her curls back from her face. She was frowning now, her pretty face all tight and stern. Something told me she wasn’t playing pro yet. “That’s all this game is ever about anymore.”

She pressed her hand against my chest, pushed me away hard. “Shows all you know, smart guy,” she said. “I know you’re up to something, Gold. You wouldn’t be sniffing around the Royles otherwise. Hell, I bet they know it too.”

“And you’re just a sweet little girl who has nothing to do with them, right?” I collected my shirt from the back of the sofa, pulling it back on. “You were at their party. You got right in my face after I turned down Gina Royle.” I shook my head as I fastened the buttons. “Can’t help thinking the two things are connected.”

“Could be a coincidence,” she said coolly, pouring herself a glass of water. 

“No such thing,” I replied, twisting my tie back on. “I’m a detective, doll. I take the clues and see what they tell me. You’re one of Gina’s twists. I know she’s got all kinds for every kind of man she needs to get under her thumb.”

She laughed, quiet. “And she wants you under her thumb, of course.” She looked at me, swirling the water in her glass. “You could have turned me down.”

I sat down on the edge of a chair to put my shoes on. “Babe, when it’s been a while, you won’t find a man who’ll say no when some dumb broad is being paid to screw him.”

She set the glass down on the table. “I think you’ve said enough,” she said.

I looked up at her, smirking. She looked pissed. “When I haven’t even told you about my cunning plan to bring down the Royles? Your boss isn’t going to be pleased that one of her whores failed at pillow talk level one.”

She walked to the door and opened it. “Get the hell out, Gold.”

I straightened up, pulled on my jacket. “Do I get a goodbye kiss, doll?”

“What do you think?” she asked, cold as ice.

“I’ll take that as a hell no.” I fished into my pocket, dug out my wallet. “I don’t know what the usual rate is these days, but last I heard from Vice, this’ll cover you.” I tucked a twenty down the front of her robe. She looked as if I’d slapped her. “It’s all I can spare, and to be honest, I’ve had better.”

She tugged the bill up between two fingers, looked at it, then looked back at me. Her other hand moved whip-smart and caught me right across the face. For such a tiny slip of a dame, she had one hell of an arm on her.

“This was never about the money or getting information from you,” she said, her voice crisp and cold as a winter morning. She shoved the bill into my breast pocket with enough force to tear it. “Keep that. You need it more than I do.”

No pro skirt, no matter how good, ever turned down payment. It was enough to make me stared at her.

She turned her back, stalking across the room to the dresser, then looked over her shoulder at me. “What’s your price, Gold?” she asked.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She returned, carrying a delicate lady’s purse and pulled out a thick roll of bills, thicker than any I’d seen in years. If I wasn’t sure she worked for the Royles before, I sure as hell was now. 

“This was never about the money,” she repeated. “Maybe if I can get that into your thick head, you’ll realise what the hell you just missed.” She smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes, then peeled a dozen twenties off the roll and shoved them between the buttons of my shirt. She rose up on her toes, bringing herself eye-to-eye with me and murmured, “You should buy yourself something pretty, baby.”

Before I had a chance to say a damned thing, she shoved me out the door and slammed it behind me.

The bills fell in fluttering leaves from my shirt, landing in a heap around my feet.

 

______________________________________________

 

She got into my head.

That was probably Gina’s plan the whole time: send one of her broads to be a distraction, to keep my mind off the Royles themselves. I had to admit I didn’t expect the temper on the little bitch, or the attitude. I definitely didn’t expect the dollars she threw in my face.

I should have left them lying, but there was enough there to cover the cost of seeing a lawyer, even if it wasn’t enough to get Bennie’s case reopened.

Hell, I would screw her again if I got paid that much every time.

Goddamn it.

She was trouble. I knew it when she kissed me and I still went there. It had been so goddamn long since anyone had even looked at me twice that I wanted to go back for more. Even if she would probably sooner spit in my eye than go near me again.

If I didn’t know the guys on vice were patrolling, it was halfway tempting to go down to the strip and find someone - anyone - and get the edge off the want the little bird had woken.

All the same, I kept coming back to what she had said. It wasn’t about the money. It wasn’t about the information. What else could it have been? She was working for the Royles, so the only thing it could have been was leverage, and since they had already taken every damn thing I had, what good was that?

Something I had missed. 

That was what the broad had said. 

She knew who I was, but that wasn’t a big deal. She suspected I was after the Royles. True, but not entirely accurate. She suspected I had a new hand to play. Definitely not true yet. She sought me out, gave me something for nothing. 

And a hell of a thing it was too.

She wasn’t pro, that was for damn sure, but what she lacked in experience, she made up for in enthusiasm. 

It was almost tempting to crack open the bourbon, drown her out. She was a lay, nothing more. She didn’t get anything from me I didn’t get anything but a good time from her. She didn’t need to be a complication.

Of course, it was never that simple. 

The complication got a lot more complicated when someone came knocking.

It was a little before noon, and a storm had settled over the city. Rain drummed against the windows like impatient fingers. The distant roll of the thunder was out over the bay, and lightning cracked across the sky.

No one in their right mind would have been out on the street, but someone was knocking at the door all the same.

I bundled together the files I was examining. “Come in.”

The waft of perfume hit me even before I saw her face. Gina Royle. She framed herself in the doorway, a gloved hand pressing to the jamb. Her spike-tipped umbrella rested against the floor, and she tilted her head, the shadow cast by her hat slicing her features neatly in two. 

“Johnny,” she murmured. “Good to see you.”

Normally, a gentleman has to rise when a lady enters the room, I but didn’t see any lady, so I leaned back in my chair. “Miss Royle. Wish I could say the same.”

She stepped into the office, casting a condescending eye over the peeling walls, the rusted pipes, the crooked blinds. “A steep descent from your glass house down at Fifth, isn’t it?” she said, smiling her poison smile. 

My time at the Fifth had been focussed completely on her and her family. There had been wall to wall pinboards of Gina Royle, relatives, associates, business partners both legitimate and otherwise. 

Now, I had a ruined box of a hellhole that couldn’t even hold a tack in a wall because of her double-crossing snitch, too much giggle juice, and a monkey wrench.

“You work with what you got,” I replied, drawing a cigarette from my case. “What brings you downtown?”

She propped her umbrella by the door and strolled over to the desk. Got to give the broad credit: she knew how to work her rags. She wasn’t in black today. This time is was a red so dark you couldn’t tell, all fitted, buttoned down, almost like a suit any man could wear, if not for the skirt. 

“I just wanted to tell you you’re welcome,” she said, perching on the opposite seat and crossing one leg over the other, revealing stockinged knees.

I flicked my zippo open, let the flame dance for a second, then caught and dragged it. The cigarette glowed, and I let her stew, puffing out smoke lazily. “What exactly am I meant to be grateful for?” I asked. 

Her lips curved. “Oh, come now,” she said, propping one arm on the back of the chair. She knew how to display herself, that was for damned sure. “I wasn’t the only one to hear about your run in with that pretty little blonde.”

A flick of my thumb knocked some ash from the end of the cigarette. “There’s no law against screwing some dumb skirt.”

She laughed. “If she was only some dumb skirt, sure,” she agreed. “But we both know that she wasn’t.”

I leaned forward, bracing one hand on the edge of the desk. “No law against screwing any of your little twists either,” I said. “She didn’t get paid, so you can’t tell me you’ll have vice on me, if that’s your game.”

“Who said I was out to get you, Johnny?” she asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “I’m just showing you what I have to offer. Fine, high-quality pieces of tail who will do anything you please. The funds to get your son out of the orphanage and back with you.” She tapped scarlet nails on the arm of the chair. “Could even see a way to get you your job back.”

I ground out the cigarette in the ashtray with enough force the smouldering ashes burned my fingertips. “I gave you my answer last night.”

Gina lifted her hand to brush a stray curl back from her brow. “I don’t usually take the first refusal at face value,” she replied, smiling that carmine smile. “After all, the best things come to those who wait.” She sat up slowly, uncrossed her legs. “Every man as a price, Johnny, and I will find yours.”

“The hell you will, Gina.”

She laughed, her teeth so white and even they could have been painted. “Trust me, Johnny,” she said, rising and smoothing her skirt down. “Even if you don’t want me as a friend, you sure as hell don’t want me as an enemy.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “What else could you do to me?” I asked. 

She rested her hands on the desk, her fingers spread like long white spider legs. “Think about what you’re asking, Johnny,” she said, gazing across the files at me and smiling that brilliant smile. “You know what you have left. You know what could be taken away. Permanently.”

She could have sucker punched me. 

Bennie.

It was one thing to have him locked up in a orphanage. This was a whole other league.

“You’d kill a kid?” I put my hand on the arm of my chair. Better to grip that than to get up, reach across the desk and sock her in the face. 

“I never said that,” she said with a quiet laugh. “That’s very presumptuous of you.”

“You go near him, and I swear to God I would end you.”

Gina straightened up, tilting her head. “You know what you need to do, to be sure nothing happens to him, Johnny,” she said. “Same as always. Keep your nose out of my business, and everything’ll be silk.”

“And if I don’t?”

She shrugged elegantly. “You have two choices, Johnny,” she said. “You can take my offer and do your thing from an office I provide, with some rules and regulations in place. Or you sit on the bench and nothing gets any worse for you or little Benjie.”

If any dame ever earned a busted lip, it was her, but Bennie didn’t need to be put in any more danger.

“I’m not going to take your deal.”

She retrieved her umbrella. “Then enjoy the bench,” she said. “You’ll be sitting there a good long while.”

The second she was out the door, I was on the telephone.

Less than three hours later, I walked into one of the diners just off the boardwalk. It was empty, except for a bored waitress at the counter. Every stool was deserted, but I ordered a coffee, black, and headed for one of the patchwork green and white booths that lined the walls, out of the way.

The waitress brought over the coffee as Shepherd walked through the door. He shook the raindrops off his hat, looked about, then headed my way. 

“Gold.”

I stirred sugar into the coffee. “Don’t say I told you so,” I said without looking up, “but you did.”

He slid into the opposite seat, the worn leather creaking as he sat. “Royle?”

I set the spoon down on the saucer. “She came to my office this morning. She upped her offer from last night or told me what my other choice was.”

“Everything you wanted or nothing?”

I looked across the table at him, all youth and ambition and belief in virtue and goodness. “I need you to get Bennie somewhere else. Somewhere that she can’t touch him. I don’t care how far away, but he needs to be gone.”

Shepherd paled. “You don’t really think she would?”

“I know she would,” I replied grimly. “I can’t promise anyone that I won’t go after the Royles if I get information I can use, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that I’m putting Bennie in the firing line.”

“No,” Shepherd agreed. “I never imagined you would.”

I turned the cup with one fingertip. “Can you get him somewhere safe? Somewhere only you can know about?” 

“You don’t trust my department?”

I laughed quietly. “Phil, you know me. I don’t trust anyone.”

He met my eyes, then looked down, turning his hat over in his hands. “Thanks.”

I drained the coffee all in one go. It might have burned. I didn’t notice. “Get him out of town,” I said. “Get him out of state if you can. Put him somewhere she would never look. Do it as soon as you can.”

“Do you want to see him before he goes?”

I set the cup down to hard. The saucer cracked right across the middle. “Better if I don’t.”

Shepherd looked at me. “He’ll ask to see you, John. What do I tell him?”

“The truth.” I pulled out a letter I’d put together just after I called him. 

I could have typed it, but Bennie was too smart for that. He would want to see hand-writing, so I wrote it. It shook like I was back on the bottle, but every word in it was exactly what needed to be said. It would be a talisman for him, a reminder that as much as a jackass as I was, I was going to make things right, and as soon as it was done, he could come back home to me.

“You can’t mean right now,” Shepherd said, looking shocked. “I’d need time to get the arrangements made.”

“We don’t have time,” I said quietly. “She’ll have eyes on the place. We need him out of here, before they get a chance to get anywhere near him.” I pushed the sealed envelope across the table to him. “Please. I’ll owe you.”

Shepherd picked up the letter, slipped it into his inside pocket. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“When do I ever?” I arranged the broken saucer, cup and spoon on the table. “He’s my boy, Phil, but they’re the ones that took the world away from me. If I have a chance to get them out of the picture, a chance to get that world back, to get him back, I’m going to do it, and I can’t do that if I know he’s in danger.”

Shepherd nodded. “You want to know where he is, when he’s settled? Or you could go too? Leave it all behind here.”

“I can’t let them win.” I breathed in deeply, then out. Tonight was a night that needed liquor, but for Bennie’s sake, I wouldn’t. “Don’t give me an address. Don’t even tell me the details, when you’re done. Just give me the town, so I know where to find him when it’s over.”

“And I destroy all contact details?” Shepherd guessed.

I nodded. “We don’t know how far their moles reach. The more anonymous he is, the safer he’ll be.”

“Wherever I put him?”

I looked across the table at the Assistant District Attorney. Of all the people in this whole stinking city, he was the one person I knew I could count on to do the right thing. “Put him where you know he’ll be safe, and I’ll know he’ll be safe too.”

I’d swear Shepherd flushed. Kid embarrassed easily. 

“I’ll make sure he’s protected,” he promised, rising abruptly. “You’ll be okay?”

“Tell me he’s safe and I’ll be fine.”

It was the biggest damned lie I’d told all day, but it sounded true enough to him. Of course it would. He didn’t have a kid. He shoved his hat back on, nodded to the waitress, then headed back out into the rain.

I stayed where I was and just watched the rain fall.

 

______________________________________

 

 

It was two days before I got word from Shepherd.

I forgot what it meant to go home in an evening. Sometimes, I’d wake up at my desk, so I kept a change of clothes there, but I made sure I left at least once a day. A man had to eat after all. Can’t get by on smokes and the promise of undrunk bourbon.

It was just dumb luck that my next intruder showed up on a good day.

I had made it home the night before, so I was shaved and my shirt and suit were both clean. I even stopped for breakfast at a small café two blocks from my office. For the first time since Gina had threatened Bennie, I looked like a regular, average working Joe.

It wasn’t that I was expecting anyone.

I was using the morning to go over the files I had snuck out with me from the precinct when I packed up my stuff. No one knew I’d made duplicates of everything, just like no one knew they were shoved in the bottom of the box I carried out, when I left in disgrace.

It wasn’t everything, not by a long shot, but it was better than nothing. 

I wasn’t expecting anyone.

She didn’t knock, and the hinges didn’t creak. The door was shut behind her when she said, “Good morning, Mr Gold.”

If she had stuck me with a cattle prod, she couldn’t have shocked me more. 

My chair slammed back, hitting the wall behind me, and I was on my feet before I could even think.

Bella.

Gina’s twist.

The blonde broad who I had almost managed to forget.

Instead of the silk sheath she’d worn at the gala, she was wearing an elegant cream twinset, a string of pale pink pearls around her neck, and a hat that framed her face and made her look far too sophisticated. Her make-up was more subdued, and she looked more like a lady than anyone I had ever seen.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She offered a smile. “I’m here to make you a proposition,” she said, walking towards the desk.

“I don’t want any of your offers,” I said bluntly. “I told Miss Royle where she could stick her plans.”

Bella smiled, though her blue eyes remained cool. “I didn’t say I was here on her behalf, Mr Gold,” she murmured, circling the desk. Her hand slid over my shoulder, her fingers warm through my shirt and coat. “I would recommend you sit down and listen.”

“You think I take orders from a dame?”

She smiled, leaning close enough to touch her lips to mine. “I think you’ll want to hear what I have to offer.” One of her knees brushed against mine as she perched on the desk. “We have a mutual enemy, after all.”

I sat, curious enough to listen. “Explain,” I said, propping my elbows on the arms of the chair and steepling my fingers in front of me.

“You lost out last time, because your source dried up,” she said. She was swinging her leg back and forth, and I was pretty sure she knew exactly how distracting that was. “You want to bring them down. I’m offering you a fresh source.”

“Who?”

She tilted her head, smiled. “Who do you think?”

I snorted in disbelief. Dames were useless when it came to information. They forgot the stuff that was important, and if they were cornered, I could be pretty damn sure they would crack like an egg on a sidewalk. “Sorry, sweetheart. If I’m getting information, I want it to be good.”

Her foot moved sharp as a snake and the heel of her shoe pressed tight against my pants. It was enough to make me use language that shouldn’t be used in front of a lady.

“Don’t think that I’m joking, Mr Gold,” she said quietly, her blue eyes fixed on my face, hard as diamond. “And don’t imagine that I’m weak or stupid. You want information. I’m offering it to you on a silver platter.”

“I have a hard time believing whores who work for the very person I want to see brought down.”

She leaned forward, bracing a hand on either side of me, on the back of the chair. “You’re meant to be the detective, Gold,” she said quietly. “Take the clues. Put them together. Do you really think I could have come to you any way but the way I did without her suspecting me?”

Her face was so close I could feel the warmth of her breath, and the scent of jasmine wrapped around me. “You expect me to believe she didn’t send you?” I asked. “That she hasn’t sent you now?”

“What do I have to do to show you I’m serious?” she whispered.

“Prove it.” My mouth felt dry, and my words rasped. Her mouth was so close that it was just begging to be kissed. She sat back, though, smiled, and reached for her purse, snapping it open and pulling out a folded piece of paper. 

“This is a start.”

There were a dozen names on it. I recognised two of them, but couldn’t place them from memory, and the rest weren’t familiar.

“Who are they?”

She lowered her foot from the chair, letting her leg swing again. “You’re the big dick,” she said. “You figure it out. I’ve given you information. It’ll be useful if you’re as good as you think you are.”

“And I’m meant to trust you because of this?”

She closed her purse with a snap. “Whether you trust me is up to you,” she said. “You asked for proof I’m willing to give you real information, and I did. What you do with it is…” She paused when there was a rap at the door. “Are you expecting anyone?”

I frowned. “No.” Before she could move, I called, “Come in.”

“Mr Gold?”

To my surprise, the broad perched on my desk hissed, “Hell!”

“Mr French.” I stood up. He looked surprised to see the girl there, even if he couldn’t see her face. “My lady friend was just about to leave.” I glanced at Bella, who was staring at the window, as if she wished she could jump out. “Right, Bella?”

“Not like I have a choice, Gold,” she said in a low voice, getting up from the desk. The look she cast me was somewhere between furious and frustrated. “You want to find me, you know where I can be called on.” 

“If the names check out,” I murmured, slapping her firmly on the backside. “Run along, doll.”

Her face flushed and her look turned poisonous. Still, she lowered her head, playacting at propriety, and hurried past French, who tipped his hat politely to her, even though she didn’t even lift her head to look his way.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, Mr Gold,” he apologised.

I waved it away. “What brings you around, Mr French? Like I told you on the telephone, I haven’t had any luck tracing Rose yet.”

French looked flustered. He always did, his cheeks red and his jowls quivering. “I went looking for photographs, like you said,” he said, rooting about in his coat pocket. “You said you needed something more recent. I found some of her graduation photographs from three years ago.”

That was a start. 

There was a hell of a difference between a plump fifteen year old and the woman she would become at twenty-two.

He pulled out a creased and rumpled envelope, handing it over. It looked like it had been used a dozen times over, before it became home to his daughter’s photographs.

I flipped the envelope open, pulled out the photographs and spread them on the desk. A very familiar face smiled back at me. The difference between Rose French at fifteen and Rose French at twenty-two was exceptional. She had aged well, slim, elegant, with large bright eyes and dark hair that I could see she had now dyed.

I knew her.

The damned woman had walked out of the office past her own damned father less than five minutes ago.

 

_____________________________________________

 

I didn’t trust the dame, not an inch.

The first thing I did after French left was set a tail on her. Little Jimmy had given up thieving as soon as he skipped out on his parents, but his skills were still available given enough dough. No one ever spotted their little red-head shadow. He’d earned the nickname of the Fox.

I didn’t have much to spare, but I wanted eyes on her at all times.

My own destination was to the Workshop.

I kept a collection of broken watches and gadgets in my drawer. They usually served as a decent cover when I headed down to Old Joe’s rooms. 

For nearly twenty years, Old Joe had been the go-to man for the Biancos. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He ran the most famous workshop in town, doing high-quality repair work for anyone who paid, but it was also rumoured that he provided tools of the trade for shadier members of society. 

Things had changed after Leo Bianco’s death. 

He was approached by the Royles to take up a similar position in their establishment, but even Old Joe could smell a bad egg. He turned them down flat, telling them he wanted to work for himself for a while. 

Less than a year later, Old Joe’s workshop had burned to the ground. According to the Fire Marshalls, one of the torches had been left on, and a leak had set the whole place alight. It was the biggest crock of shit anyone had ever heard. Fortunately, Old Joe was out of town at the time, but his son, Gus, had been there and tried to save as much as he could. It had almost killed him. 

Old Joe set up a new workshop with what he had left. This time, it was set up in an apartment block, somewhere much more difficult to torch without people asking more questions. It was smaller, but it was still the best place to go.

I knocked at the door, holding up one of the broken watches to the glass panel that flanked the door. The locks and deadbolts clattered and rattled, and Gus pulled the door open, squinting out from his one good eye.

“Hey! Gold! Good to see you.”

“How’s it going, Gus?”

The man shrugged prosaically. “Could be better. Could be worse.” He opened the door a little wider. “That watch still giving you trouble? I swear to God, you’d do better getting a new one.”

“It’s sentimental,” I replied. “My old man’s.”

It was the same routine we played every time, changing the words just enough so it didn’t get stale. He closed the door behind me, and slid the deadbolts back into place. There were six locks, plus four deadbolts. The last fire had made him justifiably paranoid.

He jerked his head down the narrow, cluttered hall, indicating for me to follow. There were racks of tools hung on every inch of space, boxes stacked along the floor. He hadn’t been able to save much, but Old Joe had enough of a reputation for discretion that he had friends, and his friends had made certain he would still be able to work.

The main room of the apartment was the workshop, with a broad work table scattered with tiny cogs and gears. I knew better than to ask what Old Joe was working on. Even before, when I had the badge and needed information, no one asked Old Joe anything. You never got more than a baleful look, and his head bowed back over his work.

The fire changed all that.

“You want a drink?” Gus asked, limping towards the kitchen.

“Coffee. Black.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Still, huh?”

“Giving up the booze was a low price to pay,” I replied, following him. There was a smaller table there, and I sat down, as he filled the kettle from the faucet. “How’s the old man doing?”

“Getting by,” Gus replied, looking towards the bigger room. His father was bent over the table, peering through a magnifying glass. “We’re not short on work, but I know he misses the old place more than ever. This place is getting too small.”

“Would he go back into the world?”

Gus grimaced. The scars across his face creased. “What would be the point?” he asked. “Pa’s getting old, and I won’t be able to run this place after he’s gone.”

That was the worst that the fire had done. 

Young Gus had been much an expert as his father, with a knowledge of technology, delicate touch, and all the skills he would need to take over when his father retired. Now, he was blind in one eye, scars twisted up his left hand and his right shook almost constantly. 

I watched his father working, as Gus made up a pot of coffee. Old Joe was a quiet man, but if you pissed him off, you would know about it. The Royles didn’t realise just how many friends the little guy had. The people who did work for them were the ones who Joe wouldn’t even consider helping. He had a code, and he stuck to it. 

Mostly, now, the code was Screw the Royles.

If he had been a more dangerous man, I knew that Joe could have easily brought down the Royle empire from the inside, but Old Joe was a good father. Three years after the blaze had been spent getting Gus back to health, and after that, keeping food on the table.

That was where we differed.

He could have gone after the Royles, but he didn’t. I couldn’t do anything but go after them where and when I could. They had screwed up too many lives already.

Gus sat down opposite me, setting the cup of black coffee down.

“What brings you here, Gold? Unless it really is the watch this time?”

I shook my head. “If my father had given me a watch, it would be at the bottom of the river as soon as looked at.” I pulled out the list that the dame had given me, unfolding it and sliding it across the table to him. “Any of those ring a bell?”

Gus picked the sheet up, bringing it close to his good eye and scrutinising it. When he set it down, he looked suspicious. “How the hell did you get these names?”

That was a surprise.

“Let’s just I got someone who has something to prove,” I said. “The names are good?”

“Buddy, you got ten of the Royles’ fences and cannons here.”

I snatched back to paper, staring at the names. Two of them, I’d known, but only on petty felony charges.”

“I’d say your canary is singing on key.”

I stared at the list. “How about that.”

“You don’t look pleased. Someone you didn’t want on side?”

“It’s complicated,” I said as I looked up at him. “It’d be a hell of a lot simpler if they weren’t shooting straight.”

Gus grinned crookedly. “But where’s the fun in that?” he asked. He drank some of his own coffee, then added, “You take these guys out, Gold, you’ll be back on Gina’s wavelength. You sure you want to do that? After what happened last time?”

“She didn’t put the monkey wrench in my hand.”

His mismatched eyes fixed on me. “You sure about that? From what I heard, you were pissing her off in all the worst ways. Wouldn’t put it past her to set you up.”

I didn’t say anything, but I had to admit the thought had crossed my mind. 

I always remembered confronting Sid Glass, and I know for a fact I threatened him. I know there was liquor involved, a hell of a lot of it, and I know I got to my wheels somehow. Apart from that, it wasn’t clear until I was pulled out of my bed, still thick with blood, and Bennie was dragged away, yelling that I didn’t do anything.

Evidence was evidence.

The wrench was found in my place. My arms were all scratched up with defensive marks, like someone tried to get me away from them. My shirt was splattered with blood, and it looked like I’d rolled my sleeves up. It didn’t help that I wasn’t know for holding back. If someone had information, I would get it.

On top of the threats, I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

The fact that Glass survived was the only reason I wasn’t locked up. 

There were also witnesses who said they were sure they saw me passed out in my car. It wasn’t much, but reasonable doubt was the best I could hope for in the circumstances. It still wasn’t enough to stop them taking Bennie from me.

“She won’t let it be,” I said. “Not until I let it go. And I’m not letting it go. Not after everything that family has done.”

Gus shook his head. “Rather you than me, buddy,” he said.

 

_______________________________________________________

 

The names on the list were gold.

I passed them on to Shepherd, who got them scattered around the precincts. 

One by one, they were picked up, and enough evidence was found in their homes or on their person to get each and every one of them arrested. They were caught out in a run of stings, and even Ice Maiden Bianco expressed her surprise at such efficiency by the Storybrooke PD. I liked to think it was biased reporting, since rumours said that she and the good ADA had been seen stepping out together.

My source had been keeping on the quiet in the days since she dropped the list in my lap, but less than twenty-four hours after the arrests started, I got a call.

“Gold.”

“Gold, it’s Jimmy.”

I sat up at the desk. Jimmy never called, unless something major was going down. “What’s happened, kid?”

“I’m down by the warehouses at the docks,” he said, his voice hushed. I could hear the sound of the sea behind him, the rattle and roar of engines. “Your skirt was picked up by a couple of hatchetmen and brought down here. It didn’t look like they were bringing her in for a casual chat, if you know what I mean.”

The stupid dame was in trouble, like I knew she would be.

She’d let slip too much, and now, they were going to off her.

“Keep an eye, Jimmy. I’m on my way.”

It took less than a half hour to get to the docks. 

Evening was settling in, and there was a chilly mist creeping along the waterline. Jimmy snuck out of the shadows as I got out the car.

“You brought backup, chief?”

“To do what? Go looking for a dumb broad in a warehouse?”

He looked at me. I could tell the kid was scared. 

“You don’t need to stick around,” I told him. “Skedaddle.” 

He pointed out the warehouse I was heading into, then fled. If these were the Royles’ anonymous stores, I knew I could be on to something, but without evidence, I was just a peeper, having a look for a missing dame. 

The door was locked, so I checked around the sides and spotted a window, not far up. Used a couple of crates to reach it and climbed through into the darkness. There were crates as far as the eye could see, and not a one of them was marked with official shipping markers.

With all the warehouses on the docks, it was impossible to know which ones to search, but now, with this right in front of me, I knew this had to be the Royles’ major base. There had been suspicions of smuggling, even dope smuggling, for years, but we’d never pinned anyone or anywhere down.

Jimmy was right.

I should have brought back-up, but they couldn’t come in without just cause, especially not when a disreputable ex-cop had broken into the premises to find the excuse.

There was a stifled scream from further in.

I pulled out my Roscoe and followed the sound. Strips of light cut in through high windows, so I stuck to the wall, keeping to the shadows. There was a flight of stairs leading down into a basement, and I heard another cry. It was definitely a woman, and unless I was mistaken, it sounded a hell of a lot like Bella. 

The corridor at the bottom of the stairs was dark, but a door was open at the far end, just a crack, but enough to let a thin line of light lead me right two it. I put my eye to the gap, and my hand tightened on the butt of the gun.

Jimmy said there were two hatchetmen, and one of them was sitting on a chair close to the door, a smoke drooping from his lips. The other one had Bella tied to a chair. There was blood on her face, her eye was black and her lip was busted.

I pushed the door open just a little, and I knew she saw the movement. The big guy swung his arm again, and she screamed loud enough that he didn’t hear me pop his buddy on the head with the butt of my gun. Four more steps brought me close enough to slug the second guy hard enough to fold him to the floor.

“You okay?” I asked, sticking my gun into my belt and going on one knee to untie her.

She looked at me, and there was nothing but disappointment in her eyes.

“You really are a dumb ass,” she said, a second before someone stuck me with a cattle prod.

I hit the ground twitching, and saw her rise. The ropes around her wrists and ankles hadn’t even been tied.

“Hit him again,” she said. “We need to soften him up.”

Another bolt went through me and the world went black.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing that came back was the smell. It was a mix of brine, oil, and metal. I could hear the clank and rattle of chains shifting. I was on my back on a hard surface. It wasn’t the floor, not hard enough for that. 

Of course, then the pain came storming in.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but one or two people had definitely put the boot in while I was out of it. I could feel at least one busted rib, and my face felt like it had been pounded on. I could taste blood on my teeth. And yeah, as usual, they’d gone for the groin with a steel-toed boot from the feel of it. That would explain why I was out for so long. God, it ached.

“I think our guest’s awake.”

Bella. Rose French.

I forced my eyes open, squinting against the glare of a gas lamp hung overhead. We were still in the basement of the warehouse. I tried to sit up, but cords were wrapped over me at ankle, calf, thigh, hip, chest and shoulder, strapping me down on what I could only guess was a table. Since I had no other option, I turned my head to one side, spitting up a wad of blood.

Rose French was sitting on the chair she had occupied before, checking her split lip in a compact. I’d been out long enough for the wound to close over, leaving a thick dark line in the soft pink. Her right eye was puffed up too, and looked like it would be black in hours.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she said, snapping her compact shut.

“You bitch,” I said, straining my arms against the ropes. A glance around told me there were at least two more of the hatchetmen than the ones Jimmy saw. Five against one. Not good odds at the best of times, especially not when you’re disarmed and roped down on a table.

She smiled sweetly, walking over to the table and perching on the edge of it. “Oh, come on now, Mr Gold,” she said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you more than once that I’m not weak or stupid and all you saw was a skirt.”

“So you figured you’d literally entrap me to prove a point?”

She rested her hand on my chest, leaning over me. “I think you should start paying closer attention,” she murmured, fixing me with a steely gaze. “You walked yourself in here. I didn’t ask you to come.” She leaned down so close her face was close to touching mine. “You are in a world of trouble, Mr Gold.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing to get at your boss.”

Her blonde curls were falling around her face, and she smiled slightly. “That’s not how she sees it,” she said. “You have someone tailing her staff. You break into her facilities. You beat up two of her employees. I think that counts as a damn thing, don’t you, John? She’s not at all happy with you. If it was up to her, I’m sure some lucky fisherman would find you caught up in their nets.”

There was something about the tone of her voice.

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Can’t help noticing I’m not dead. Softened up?”

She sat back with a smile and a shrug. “Subdued for now,” she said. “The boys were keen for a little payback for your interruption. They took some persuading to stop.” She lifted a slender hand and brushed a curl back from her brow. “My boss isn’t pleased with you, you know. Getting all of her little pets pinched like that. Very inconvenient for her.” She slanted a look at me. “She wants to know who spilled the beans.”

Give the bitch credit, she caught me by surprise.

If Gina didn’t know that this little tramp was her leak, no wonder she was furious.

That also meant that Gina must consider her trustworthy, to send her to get the information. 

Of course, that didn’t change the fact that Rose French had me tied to a table, surrounded by heavies, and was speaking in barely veiled threats. All I needed to do was drop her name in it, and she would be headed for a wooden kimono, and I might as well measure myself up for one as well. 

“Gina Royle wants my source?”

She smiled that benign smile. “I never said it was her,” she said. “My boss wants you to tell us exactly who told you those names and where to find them.” Her hand was moving on my shirt, undoing one button at a time, and her fingers slipped inside, touching bare skin. “She said if you’re cooperative, I don’t need to be mean to you.”

“What are you asking me?”

“Me?” For a moment, she looked surprised, but hid it well. “What I’m asking doesn’t factor in this equation. If it did, I would wonder why you came running into a building without back-up to rescue someone you considered little more than a whore.” She tilted her head, her eyes fixed on mine, and raked her nails up my chest. I hissed. “Don’t tell me you’re trying for gallantry, John. It doesn’t suit your complexion.”

“I thought,” I snapped, “you were in trouble.”

Her fingers moved in a circle on my skin. “And why would that matter to you?”

“Because you’re the damn case I’m working,” I replied sharply. “Your father asked me to find out what happened to you, and you damn well know it.” I scowled at her. “Finding you beaten to death in a basement doesn’t count as a success.” I arched my neck up towards her. “Unlike you, I have to do more than lie on my back for a living.”

Who knew being punched in the head when tied to a table would hurt more than just being punched in the head?

One of the thugs at the side of the room snickered.

Rose shook her hand, glaring hard. “I wanted to do this the easy way, Gold,” she said, leaning over me until none of the thugs could see her face. “Tell us what we need to know, and you’re free as a bird.”

“I tell you, and we both know what happens,” I retorted, watching her face. There was a grimness there, and for a second, the Royle-loyal bitch was gone. She nodded slightly. This was shit creek and we were both up it.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” she said, her hand splayed on my chest. Now that I paid attention, I could feel it trembling. God damn it all. She was in more trouble than I thought, and I’d stepped right into it. “Just tell me what I need to hear.”

I smiled at her. “Go to hell. And tell your boys to do their worst. I’m not telling you jack.”

She smiled back, but it was a tight, thin-lipped expression. “The boys are only here to be my backing band if I can’t get you to talk,” she said, straightening up. She held out a hand. One of the thugs approached and handed her a hammer. She hefted it in her hand. “Like I said, John, I don’t want to have to hurt you, but if I have to, I will.”

She was serious, and it was a heavy hammer.

“My boss isn’t a patient person,” she said conversationally, walking around the table. “She would be happy to know you were beaten to a pulp. The boys are keen to play too. I’ve heard they can turn a man to a puddle in less than fifteen minutes.”

Four big lugs and their fists or one small dame with a hammer.

How bad could it be?

It would keep the both of us alive.

“I’ll tell your boss what she needs to hear,” I said. No matter how good an actress little Miss French was, she went pale. I grinned at her, even though my cheeks ached like hell. She didn’t know which way the cards were going to fall. The lugs were all ears. “Tell her that I pulled my source from my ass.”

One of the men swore, but little Rose French stared at me. 

Never let it be said that I didn’t protect someone who needed it.

“You’re going to regret that,” she said quietly.

“I’ve regretted a lot of things, doll,” I replied, drawing a breath. My ribs pulled and ached and I winced. “Pissing off that crazy bitch isn’t one of them.”

“Hold that thought,” she said and brought her hammer down on my right kneecap.

I took maybe five seconds of the pain, and then let the black take me again.

 

_________________________________________________________

 

 

Coming back from unconsciousness once was bad enough.

Twice in one day was hell.

This time, it was to a brighter room, lit with electric lamps. From the reek of bleach and chemicals, I could guess it was a hospital, though I had no idea how I got there. I was pretty sure I should be in a world of pain, but since I wasn't, I guessed there was some kind of morphine involved. It definitely explained the fuzzy glow around the plain white walls of the small room.

I moved one arm and touched my face. My fingers told me I was puffed up like a toad by the riverbank, but my face told me jack. It felt soft, plump, and I poked at it. Both eyes blacked, a busted nose, swollen lip. I'd guess a cracked jaw and there was a gap where a tooth was missing. My right cheek felt strange, so I poked at it some more.

"It won't get any better if you keep doing that."

I squinted around the room. Phil Shepherd was there, perched on a seat by the bed. He had his hat and coat off, and his sleeves were rolled up. Didn't know he was a doctor. How about that. 

"It's like poking jello through a napkin," I informed him.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "You're lucky we got to you when we did. If we'd been much later, we would have been scraping you up in a bucket."

"Nope."

He frowned, dragging the chair closer to the bed. "What do you mean nope?"

I looked at him, all earnest good boy. He was like a dumb little puppy sometimes. Bet he never took a leak on the carpet, though. "This was before," I told him. "When they zapped me. Face and ribs and balls. That was all them." I remembered the mouthful of blood and the pain and it was nice to not feel it. "She did the rest."

"She?" Phil leaned closer. "Gina?"

I frowned at him. He was ADA? He was never going to get anywhere if he didn't keep up. "Nope. Her little bitty pretty..." That was kinda funny. It all rhymed. I had to laugh. Somewhere in my ribs, something hurt just a little, so I stopped. "The skirt. The blonde. That dame with the eyes and the pins and..." A memory drifted across my mind, of those long, sleek legs. "She looks damn fine in nothing."

Phil sat back in his chair. "The blonde? She stoved in your leg?"

I could remember the hammer. I could remember her clocking me on the nose. If I gabbed, she was dead. If she didn't act like she was getting information from me, we were both toast. I looked at Phil, who was leaning closer, like I had a story to tell.

"What blonde?"

"You mentioned a blonde, John."

I tried to sit up, and he leaned closer, shoved some pillows behind my back. I stared down the bed. Sometimes, there was a bulge under my blanket when I woke up, but nothing like that. I leaned forward until my ribs ached, and patted it. "Why're my legs in a box?"

"Your knee," Phil said. "It was smashed in."

I lifted the blanket up. "With a hammer," I recalled. My leg was wrapped in solid white, and hurt about as much as my face. It was going to be a hell of a thing when the drugs wore off.

Phil put his hand on my arm like he would do with a sick grandparent. "John, I need you to tell me what happened."

I set the blanket back down. "I got hit."

"I got that much," Phil said. "Why were you at the warehouse?"

I stared at him for a long time. "To find her."

"Gina?"

"No no no. Not Gina. I don't go looking for her."

"Who, then?"

I put my hands over my face. The light was starting to hurt my eyes. "The broad. My case." I peered out between my fingers. "She paid me once. Does that make me a gigolo?"

Phil was staring at me. "What?"

"My head hurts." I sounded like a kid with a grazed knee. The drugs were starting to wear off, I guessed. "Can you hit the lights?" The chair scraped on the floor, and the lights went out one by one. I lowered my hands as Phil returned to the chair. "How bad does it look?"

"Two cracked ribs," he said. I could make out the shape of him by the light coming in through the square frosted window in the door. "Your face looks like a bruised peach. Black and blue all over. Cracked knee, split right across the middle." He leaned closer. I could see his profile lit up like a shiny nickel. "John, I need you to focus. I need to know what happened."

"Told you."

He shook his head. "Not clearly enough," he said. "You've been out of it for two days. The girl gave us as much as she could. She headed home yesterday. Said you'd come in to rescue her from those thugs." Phil leaned closer. "Who was she?"

"You let her go?"

"She was in a better state that you," Phil said. "One of the lugs had her on the floor and was pummelling her when we arrived, but she wanted to go home."

I stared at him.

"You let her go."

"We can't lock up a dame for being pounded on. You would have done the same."

I almost snorted, but the first aches in my face stopped me. I would have. I did do the same. That was why I ended up stunned, battered, and tied to a table, letting a pretty dame with a hammer smash my kneecap. She looked like she was in trouble. 

And after all of that, she was the one to walk out the door.

"What was her name?"

"Sally Harper," Phil said. "She left her address and number, in case she needs to testify."

I wanted to applaud the nerve of the little vixen, lying to the face of the ADA, playing the victim card.

Somewhere, through the cloud of the drugs, a thought surfaced.

"How'd'you find us?"

"There was an anonymous tip called in," Phil replied. "You were seen busting into the warehouse. The guys at Seventh thought it was a regular break and enter. When they caught the two thugs down in the basement with you and Miss Harper, they called on the DA's office. Turns out you found one of Royle warehouses. It's still being turned over as we speak."

I laughed, then groaned as my ribs strained. "She won't be happy about that."

"Her boys shouldn't have used it as a pounding ground," he countered. "How'd'you find it?"

"Following my case," I replied. "The broad. Whatever her name is. I heard she'd been taken down that way."

Phil rubbed his eyes with the fingers of one hand. "John, sometimes, I think it would be a mercy to take you out back and shoot you," he said. "A dame you're following is hauled into a place way out of town, and you go walking in? Don't you recognise a trap when it's right in front of you?"

"You think I'd just leave a broad to die, waiting for the Seventh to get their thumb out their ass?" I countered. Yeah. Drugs were definitely wearing off now. I could feel the ache spreading along my jaw. "If I hadn't gone in, you'd never have got your warrant."

"You could have called and said she was in trouble."

I rubbed at my cheek gingerly. "I could have," I said. "But then, I wouldn't know if Gina was really gunning for me. Now, I know she is. She knows I gave you those names, Phil. You've got a leak. Someone let slip you got them from me. I'm lucky I'm not wormbait."

"So all this...?" He gestured to me.

"Persuasion," I replied, leaning my head back on the pillows. I could feel the throb in my knee now. "No names were named, but their boss wanted to know my source."

"Thank God we got there in time."

My laugh wheezed in my chest. "You really think I'd give it up to her? After everything? She could have chopped me to ribbons and I'd still spit in her eye."

Phil ran his hand over his face. "You are a stubborn son of a bitch, you know that?"

I closed my eyes, counting each and every one of the parts that hurt. "It's been said before."

He squeezed my shoulder. "You get some rest, okay? We've got people at the door. No one but medical personnel can come in for now."

I opened one swollen eye to peer at his silhouette. "Keeping me safe?"

"Stopping you running off into another trap, you jackass," he replied, pulling on his coat. He tilted his hat down. "Get some rest."

I closed my eye again. From the ache down to my bones, I could tell it was going to be a long night.

 

________________________________________

 

Days crawled by in the hospital.

It was worse than being in jail. 

At least in jail, I got to leave the room for an hour a day.

Shepherd seemed to think I was still in danger, so he always made sure that when the medical staff came into the room, there were always two of them at any given time. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if Gina had a plant in the staff, none of his noble little ideas would be enough to keep an overdose of morphine from hitting my veins or a pillow from being crushed over my face.

They kept me doped to the gills most days, which made it easier to deal with the boredom, but it didn’t change the fact I was stuck there. My ribs, they said, were healing up, and my face didn’t look as like a smacked ass as it had when I was brought in. The knee, though, was a whole other thing. The docs didn’t need to say anything. I’d be limping for the rest of my life, thanks to one dame and her hammer.

The only person who visited outside of hospital staff was Shepherd himself. 

That wasn’t a big surprise, but he did bring a message from Bennie. The stupid jackass had contacted my boy’s safe house, told him what happened, and of course, Bennie wanted to be on the first bus back from wherever the hell he was.

There was no address on the envelope, no postmark to give it away, so it was safe for me to keep it, and I read it over and over any time I was lucid enough to see the words. 

I’d been there a week and a half before someone slipped through unsupervised. I must have been half-drugged, half-sleeping, because when I stirred, it was because of the subtle scent of jasmine perfume.

I opened my eyes slowly.

She was sitting on the end of the bed, my chart in her hand, and had dolled herself up in a nurse’s uniform. It didn’t sit right in the least.

Her face was healed up, all the bruises faded to dull shadows, and her hair was a darker shade. Even the way she held herself was different. She might not have been the same woman, but I’d recognise those baby blues anywhere.

“Rose.”

She looked up, startled, her eyes wide.

I wondered how long it had been since anyone called her by her name. ‘They call me Bella’, indeed. Easier to keep it impersonal, if they don’t hold your name.

Her smile came quick and light. It was well-rehearsed now that I knew to watch for it. “So you are awake,” she said. “I wasn’t sure.” She winked one of those blue eyes. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

With effort, I pushed myself upright. “Playing dress-up?” I asked.

“It was easier than the truth,” she said with disarming honesty. She flipped through the pages of my chart. “Do you think they teach them to write this badly in med school or is that how they get picked?” She kept her eyes down. She wasn’t ashamed, but I could guess that seeing her handiwork wasn’t her idea of a good time. 

“What do you want?”

She looked at me then. “You didn’t rat me out.”

I’d gone over every moment in that room, time and time again. She was there, surrounded by Gina’s loyal monkeys, and I could have dropped her in it. She was asking the questions that would have had her torn to pieces if I’d said anything. She asked, she waited, and there was only one reason she would have done that.

“You knew I wouldn’t.”

She waved one finger at me, as if I’d done a trick. “Good call, Mr Gold,” she said, and there was a trace of grudging approval in her blue eyes. “You might have been a drunk. You might have beaten a man half to death. You might be the biggest jackass this city has ever seen. But you’re not a rat.” Her lips twitched. “I was hoping the stories I heard were true.”

“And you put me in the hospital because they were.” I grimaced, reaching behind me.

She leaned over, arranged the pillows, and helped me sit back. “We do what we have to,” she said, lifting a hand to brush my hair back from my face. Her fingers brushed ten days worth of a beard. “You’re looking a mite shabby, Mr Gold. How about I get a razor in here and clean you up?”

I caught her hand, squeezed hard enough to make her wince. “No offence, doll,” I said, keeping my voice low, “I might have shown you my backbone, but you haven’t given me any reason for me to show you my throat. Especially not with a razor.”

She leaned closer, so close I could taste the peppermint on her lips. “I saved your ass, John,” she whispered, each word brushing against my lips.

“The hell you did.”

She kissed me suddenly, hard and merciless and breath-taking. Her other hand slid through my hair, smoothing down the back of my neck, and I clung to her fingers, too startled to do anything but that. 

“Tell me,” she whispered, “who let your fox tail her? Who led you straight to one of Gina’s biggest hideyholes? Who made sure that even if you came alone, there would be back up along before you were beaten to a pulp and thrown in the river?”

I stared at her. “The hell you did,” I repeated hoarsely.

She kissed me again, soft and sweet. “John, you might have scratched the fox, but I scratched harder.” The tip of her nose traced against mine, and God, I wanted her, as much as I wanted to throttle her. “We both got what we wanted.”

“And what’s that?”

Rose lifted my chin in her hand. “You got to play the big damn hero and mess with Gina without even knowing it. Twelve of her guys up the river, one of her facilities shut down by the DA and his little pretty boy. You know you wanted that.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And what did you want?”

She laughed, and the sound went right down to my bones. “That’s for me to know, baby,” she said, dropping another kiss on my lips. It was getting harder to resist the urge to lean into her kisses. She was still trouble, no matter how she declared it.

“You’re nothing but a player.” It came out like Chicago lightning, sharp and fast.

She smiled at that, eyes gleaming. “Only the best kind,” she said. She held my gaze. “I know you’ve been thinking on me, John. You came in after me. You tried to save me. I’m not going to forget that.” Her fingers brushed down my cheek. “Good intentions and all.”

“Intention is meaningless,” I snapped, turning my face away from her hand. “I was on your case. Like I told you then, your father wants you alive.”

She leaned closer, and her breath was warm as she pressed her lips to my cheek. “Hold that thought,” she whispered. “We’re not done, Johnny Gold. You and me, we are only just beginning.”

 

____________________________________________________

 

In the end, hospital played home for nearly a full month.

Phil slipped me files to keep me occupied, letting me see just what chaos I'd caused for Gina. Of course, no ties had been found to the Royle family, but that would have been too much to hope for. They were very good at keeping their hands clean, getting other people to do their dirty work for them. 

The warehouse was a treasure trove for the DA and his office. DA King even ventured down from his lofty post to pay a visit. He didn't go as far as to say thanks to me for getting my ass handed to me and giving him a big break, but then, he wouldn't.

"You just can't keep out of trouble, can you, Gold?"

"What can I say, King? It has a liking for me."

He folded his arms over his broad chest. He looked like he should be in a commercial for some kind of old-man tobacco. "Or vice versa," he said. "You going to live?"

My face wasn't black and blue anymore. I could eat solids. I could breathe without pain.

"So they tell me," I replied. "If you need any help getting more results, since your flatfoots don't seem to be making a dent..."

King snorted. "I'll go for someone who doesn't get his ass kicked because of a pretty pair of gams," he said. "Shepherd said you were playing the gallant. That you got results doesn't change the fact you were chasing tail."

"Shepherd has too much mouth for his own good."

King laughed. It was a big sound, genuine. If he wasn't so far up his own ass, I knew I would have liked the guy. "He knows which side his bread is buttered on, Gold," he said. "I know he has a soft spot for you, though God knows why."

"I didn't ask him to give a damn."

"No one ever does." King sat down in the rickety chair. It looked far too small for him. "You want to be more careful. You're not the only one on the line now, Gold."

I met King's eyes evenly. "I never was."

King nodded slowly. He wore had a beard that rustled against his tie when he moved. Going for the benevolent God look, I always figured. "I heard a whisper that your son's disappeared from the city."

"So they tell me. Nuns never were any good at keeping tabs on the boy."

"Like father, like son?"

I grimaced. "God, I hope not."

He propped his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together between them. "I'm guessing this is where plans went awry?" he said, with a nod to my leg. The protective cage was gone, but from thigh to mid-calf was still closed up in plaster. "You knew enough to get your boy out of the way. Pity you couldn't."

"I was working my own case," I said evenly. "I was keeping eyes on the daughter of my client. I thought she was in trouble, so I went in after her."

"Still playing the lone hero, huh?"

“I do a job, I get paid. She’s the job right now.”

“And you hide your son, when you have no plans to go after the Royles?” He leaned back in the chair. “Give me a break, Gold. You knew you were going to be pissing on the wrong shoes and you knew they’d go after him.”

I rubbed my brow. I tried to do without the morphine, but my leg ached like sin, and it was as distracting as the drugs. “If you have a question, King, spit it the hell out.”

He looked at me, his expression stone-hard. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” he asked, plain and direct. “Or are you just throwing rocks in the air and hoping like hell they’ll hit something when they land?”

I laughed hoarsely. “Last time I tried to do things by the book, you took my damned badge.”

“Threatening a witness in front of a dozen people isn’t by the book, you ass,” he snapped, his brows dragging together like stormclouds. “Especially not when he turns up, beaten half to death the next day.”

I looked at him then. God damn the bastard to hell. “You know I didn’t do it.”

“Of course you didn’t do it, you idiot,” he ground out, glaring at me. “You pushed the limits of what was legal, but you never broke the law.”

“You son of a bitch…”

“Don’t lay this on me, Gold,” he said, leaning closer, his voice low and hard. “You’re the one who threatened Glass. You’re the one who made your contempt for the Royles public knowledge. If you hadn’t acted like it was Custer’s last stand…” He exhaled loudly. “You’re a loose canon, John. You got caught out. I had no damned choice but to take your badge.”

He was right.

Damn him to hell, he was right.

“And now that I’ve handed you some of the Royle boys and a warehouse, I’m crawling my way back into your good graces?” I said. It came out more bitter than I expected.

He folded his hands together again, tapping his thumbs against one another. “Took you longer than I thought,” he said. “You were always so angry, I expected you to go after them as soon as they took your boy.”

“Going after them got my boy taken from me,” I said. 

He watched me, and not for the first time, I could understand why he was the DA and I was just some ex-cop. “What changed?”

I shrugged. “A year and a half is a long time, and they were stopping me from seeing my boy. Some guy shows up, asking me to look into his missing daughter. A cop I knew ending up at the bottom of the river. There’s a Royle connection to every damn one of them. Take your pick.”

His mouth curved up. “You just needed the push,” he observed, getting to his feet. 

“Right into the three-ring circus,” I snorted. “What’s your part in all this?”

He laughed. “Don’t you know, Gold?” he said. “I’m the man in the top hat.”

 

____________________________________________________

 

 

I couldn’t go home.

Not that I really wanted to.

Living on the fifth floor was a good idea if you wanted to be above the traffic, but not so great when you had a busted knee. I’d been considering the possibility of a cheap motel somewhere, but Shepherd had other plans.

I was to be put in a safe house.

Of course, I made token protests, but given that some of the safe houses were like mansions compared to my one-room apartment, I’m pretty sure I could have been a lot more convincing.

An anonymous man gave a code word to my guards, and I was swept off to the upper west side, to be planted in a ground-level apartment with no street-facing windows. 

It wasn’t much, and from the looks of it, was probably some old dame’s flat, taken by the city when she kicked off. There was lace everywhere, and the walls went through every shade of pink possible. There were even flowers drooping dried-out petals on the dresser. If you ever cut an old spinster in half, I’d swear to God her insides would look like the apartment.

“Nice.”

My driver shrugged and left.

He was barely gone when the telephone shrilled.

I knew who it would be, but even when I put it to my ear, I didn’t speak.

“You there?” Shepherd. As expected.

“Safe and sound in some old lady’s hat box,” I replied with a grimace. Even the telephone was set on a lacy cloth. “Let me guess. Sit down, take it easy, don’t worry about a damn thing, and you’ll visit when you can and bring me some pretty flowers and take me out for dinner if I’m real good.”

Shepherd snorted. “I’m starting to think the cattleprod should be revisited,” he said. “You know this is for your own good.”

“They didn’t try to off me in the hospital,” I said, leaning heavily on the walking stick they’d given me. “What makes you think they’d climb the hundred stairs to off me in my own apartment?”

“You don’t like the apartment, huh?”

I looked around the wall-to-wall chintz. “You picked it on purpose, didn’t you?”

“You got yourself smacked around,” Shepherd said virtuously. “It’s not my fault this is the only apartment we have that you can use with your leg.”

“Sure it is,” I snorted, then hissed, shifting my weight. “You got a reason for calling? Or just to tell me to sit pretty?”

“Just that,” he said. “There’s food in the kitchen, and we have people nearby in case anything happens.” He was silent for a minute. “You sure you’ll be okay on your own, Gold? We could get someone in to help you.”

“It’s a broken leg not a cracked spine.”

He sighed. “Fine. Just… don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“Would I?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” he retorted. “I’ll come by when I can.”

I laughed quietly. He would too. And he would bring flowers, because he was that much of a jackass. “See you,” I said, and hung up. 

I was halfway across the room to one of the floral-patterned, high-backed chairs that should have been in a museum decades ago, when the telephone shrilled again. I swore, turning and limping back, and snatched it from the cradle. “What?”

“Nice to hear you too, baby.”

I almost dropped the receiver. “Rose?” How the hell did the dame get the number?

“The same,” she said, then her sweetness-and-light tone was gone, replaced with the velvet-wrapped steel I was getting to know. “There’s a car pulling up outside in five minutes. Your friend Jimmy will be at the wheel. Get into it.”

“Do I get a reason?”

“Do you want to meet the welcoming committee?”

So not only was Shepherd right about the Royles still gunning for me, but I was now sure there was a leak somewhere in the D.A.s office. Only a handful of people officially knew where I was being stashed, and I was pretty damn sure that Rose French wasn’t one of them.

“How friendly is the committee?” I asked, glancing at the clock. 

“Very friendly,” she said. “They heard you were moving in and wanted to throw a party. I thought you might like a more private celebration.”

“And where will I be going?”

She laughed and it went right to the bone. “You’ll know it when you see it,” she said. “Four minutes.”

I set the receiver down and headed for the door right there and then. I might not have trusted the dame as far as I could throw her, but it was a damn sight better than ending up pasted or, worse, on the slab.

Like she said, a car pulled up.

I recognised the fox’s ginger hair even before he stuck his head out the window.

“She said you’d be waiting,” he said. “You okay in the back?”

I nodded, pulling the door open and climbing in. My leg jarred, but I’d had worse, and he hit the accelerator as soon as the door was closed.

“You okay, Mr Gold?” he asked, as he threaded through the busy streets. “Didn’t see you since you went in after her.”

I leaned against the back of the passenger seat to look at him. “You rolled on me, Jimmy,” I said. “The lady told me a tale.”

He flashed a grin. “She knew you were gonna be in a jam,” he said. “And if you’d padded me with more cabbage, I might have done what you told me.”

“Enough cabbage to keep you from telling me where we’re going?”

“And then some,” he said happily. “You might wanna hold on.”

It wasn’t a long trip, and as soon as he turned onto seventh, I knew exactly where I was going to be spending the night. The Hyperion lay up ahead, not quite as impressive by daylight as it was when it was illuminated at night.

“I’ll ditch you at the door,” Jimmy said over his shoulder. “She said you’ll know where to find her.”

I did.

The lobby was on the ground level, so I didn’t have to worry about stairs, and the concierge pointed out the elevators. They were all polished walnut, mirrors, and brass trim, like being caught up in a rich broad’s dressing table. It moved up, smooth as silk, the brass pointer swinging from one right through to seven.

The doors slid open, chiming quietly, and I stepped out into the hall. The carpets were thick, lush, and red. They silenced every step, and were a hell of a lot easier to walk on than the polished marble floors of the lobby. The corridor was wide, cream-walled, and lined with a dozen doors.

The one I was heading for was ajar.

You didn’t survive twenty years or more as a Storybrooke cop without being paranoid when it came to doors that were half-open. Even in a classy joint like the Hyperion, there could still be all manner of crimes being committed.

I wished I had been able to persuade Shepherd to get me a replacement for my Roscoe before they shipped me out of the hospital. The space beneath my left arm felt empty, without the weight of the metal in its holster resting against my ribs.

A sensible man would have called down to the lobby, asked for someone to check the room, but I had given up any claim to common sense many years ago. 

I walked as lightly as I could on my crippled leg, leaning heavily on the stick, towards the door and pushed it open with my fingertips. Some people would call out, ask if everything was okay, but I’d been shot at enough times to know that was a bad plan.

Instead, I stepped carefully into the room, setting down my right foot gingerly with each step I took. The carpet was as thick as the hallway, and I made sure I didn’t make a sound as I moved forward. 

There was no one to be seen, not a light was on, but the place had been turned over.

I could see furniture flipped over, the mattress off the bed, the drawers all pulled out and emptied. Someone had been in here and had been looking for something. Whether or not they had found it, I didn’t know.

All I could think was that I’d made a rookie mistake when I forgot to check behind the door as the cold metal of a gun’s muzzle pressed to the back of my neck.


	4. Chapter 4

My blood was rushing in my ears.

"Name," my assailant hissed.

"Gold," I replied tersely.

The gun was lifted away and my assailant sighed. "You could have knocked," Rose French said, stepping alongside me. She looked drawn and tired. She gestured around the room with her snub-nosed revolver. "I guess you don't know anything about this?"

"I came here on invitation," I pointed out dryly, leaning on my stick.

She looked me up and down with those shadowed baby blues. "And here you are," she said, closing the door and twisting the lock. "Trusting the woman who did your leg in?"

"I didn't say I trusted you," I said, walking carefully into the room. The couch and chairs were upended, so I sat on the end of the bed instead. My leg was aching like hell, but I was damned if I was going to let her see that. "But there's more chance I could take you out than a bunch of Gina's goons."

She laughed quietly. "You don't know how right you are," she said.

Her revolver was gone, out of sight. She was wearing a long overcoat, which she shed, tossing beside me on the rumpled bed. The heavy curtains were half-closed, and the lace drapes beneath were casting the room in cloudy pallor. It suited her, this half-light, like some kind of ghost or witch by moonlight. 

Underneath, her coat, she was wearing a suit, elegant and tailored, and not the kind of thing a dame should wear when moving furniture, but she did it all the same. The couch gave her some trouble, but since she had crippled me, I wasn't feeling especially charitable when it came to moving heavy objects.

It didn't take her long, though she shed the jacket of her suit and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. Couldn't deny I was watching the length of her gams as she bent and collected up her scattered possessions. She knew it took, her blue eyes flicking to my face from time to time.

This wasn't a dame who would ever have to walk the street, even if she lost everything.

All she had to do was turn her head and smile and a hundred men would be at her feet. 

"Anything stolen?" I asked, as she set the table upright and picked up the pieces of a shattered vase.

Her eyes flicked up to my face. "You think I'm dumb enough to keep anything of value where someone could find it?" she said, amusement curling her rose-pink lips. She abandoned her task to go to the liquor stand, pouring herself a measure. "You want something or are you still dry?"

"If I ask, will you tell me how you know that?"

She rested her hip against the cabinet, one arm folded over her chest, the hand of the other swirling the amber liquid in her glass. "I have eyes and ears, John," she said. "I use them." Her eyes flicked down to my encased leg. "How's it doing?"

"Still broken," I replied. "Who do you think turned this place over?"

She shrugged elegantly. "Could have been anyone," she said. "You don't do what I do without picking up a few enemies along the way."

I propped both hands on the polished brass handle of the cane. "And what exactly do you do, doll?"

She drained the glass and set it down on the table behind her with a clink. "I ask the questions."

"You walk a fine line," I murmured as she pushed off from the table. "Gina's going to figure out you're playing her, and when she does, you're dead."

"Who says I'm playing her?" she said, stepping out of one sharp-heeled shoe, then the other, her stockinged feet rosy around the edges. She continued towards me, walking like a panther. "Who's to say I'm not still playing you, Mr John Gold?"

"Why would that do you any good?" I asked. Damn woman was making it harder to concentrate. She stopped right in front of me. "I don't have access to records, information, anything useful. I know jack about what's been happening for the last year and a half. I don't have anything you can use."

One of her hands wrapped itself in my tie and she tugged, pulling me forward. "You have anger, John," she murmured, bending down to look me in the eye. "Tell me the truth. If you could take her down, her and everyone with her, you would do anything to make it so."

"Question or comment." 

Her face was so close to mine, her breath warm on my skin, her perfume draping around me like silk. "Observation, Johnny," she whispered. Her other hand snatched the cane from my fingers, throwing it aside. Even if I wanted to walk away from her, I'd have to crawl to get the cane first. If I wanted to. Right now, I could think of nowhere better to be. "Do you want to be played if it means taking out the viper's nest?"

I moved my hands, wrapping one around each of those perfect, teasing legs, curving right behind the back of each knee. "What do I get out of it?"

"You get to keep doing exactly what you're doing right now," she murmured.

I didn't need an invitation, tracing my hands up the backs of her thighs, under the hem of her smoke-grey skirt. "And you say this isn't your business," I murmured, watching her.

"This isn't," she said quietly, "but I know you wouldn't off me when I let my guard down." Her mouth curved. "You're my safest option, if I'm going to bed anyone."

"Safe?" I snorted.

She bent then and kissed me again, then pushed me back on the bed. "Yes."

She made one hell of a convincing argument. My leg, of course, got in the way, but that was her own fault, and she was more than willing to accommodate it.

She didn’t get up, once we were done. She just sprawled on the sheets beside me, looking at me out of those clear blue eyes. She propped her cheek against her hand, a thoughtful look on her face. “Why did you want me?” she asked.

I reached over the side of the bed to pull my jacket up. My cigarette case was in the pocket. I offered her one, which she took between the tips of two perfect fingers. “Have you taken a look at yourself lately, sweetheart?”

She laughed, a pretty blush creeping across her cheeks. “There are hundreds of pretty girls out there,” she said, leaning closer so I could light her cigarette. She drew on it and blew a fine stream of smoke towards the ceiling. “Why me? After everything you’ve seen of me?” Her look was challenging. “You know I could be bringing a world of trouble down on you.”

I looked at her. She was right too. I was making a deal with the devil when I put my life in this woman’s hands, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t be anywhere else. 

“When you had me on the table,” I said, “when you were asking me a question you knew the answer to, you didn’t look afraid. I could have sold you out right then, saved my ass, and you knew it, but you didn’t look afraid.”

She smiled at that, blowing out another puff of smoke. “I always pretend to be brave,” she admitted. “I figured that if I try to do the brave thing, then maybe, one day, the real bravery’ll show up.”

“Try to be brave?” I looked at her, the woman who was living with her head in the mouth of the biggest lion in the lion’s den. “Doll, to me, looks like you’re there.”

She pushed herself up to sit up, facing me. “Looking and being are two very different things,” she murmured. She caught her robe from the end of the bed, dragging it on one arm at a time. It was colourful, almost gaudy, and didn’t look right on her. “Do you trust me?”

“Hell, no,” I replied at once, lighting my own cigarette. I was sitting against the headboard, and trying to ignore the aching cramps in my bad lag. “Like you said, after everything I’ve seen of you, how the hell am I meant to trust a word you say?”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Smart boy,” she said. She leaned back, propping her elbow my by knee, one foot resting on my pillow. “I’ll give you five questions. Can’t guarantee you an answer to all, but I’ll let you try.”

I watched her, knowing there was no way she would answer obvious questions off the bat. That took care of asking whether she knew details of Gina’s dealings, if she had access to the records, whether she’d witnessed anything she would be able to give as testimony.

There was one question that had been bothering me since the first day I heard her name.

“Greg Astor,” I said.

I didn’t have to be looking hard to see the way the colour drained from her face. “What about him?”

“How did you know him?”

She watched the glowing tip of her cigarette for a moment, then lifted her eyes to mine. “I worked with him,” she said quietly, significantly, “in his last job.”

His last job, undercover in the Royle company. His retirement hadn’t involved a watch. It involved a beating, a bullet in the head, and a swim down the river. 

“You sent your father a message for him.”

She nodded slightly, her expression unreadable. “I did.”

“Why?”

“I knew he would look for some way to reach me,” she said. She drew on the cigarette hard, as if it helped to swallow in more smoke, then blew it out just as fast. “Figured it would end up in the right hands sooner or later.”

The right hands.

French went to the right precinct, looking for the right person, but the right person was dead. That meant they turned away someone who might have been able to provide information on another source inside Gina’s business. That meant he would have to find someone else to look, someone else with enough experience of the Royles.

“Son of a bitch.” I looked at her. “You sent him to me.”

Her lips turned up at one side. “Now you’re starting to catch up, John,” she murmured. “The law can only go so far. You want to bring the Royles down. Everyone knows about you and that snitch of theirs. No one else comes close.”

“You couldn’t know I would come looking.”

She sat up, cross-legged, and crushed her cigarette into the ashtray on the nightstand. “I know enough to know you got hardly any business,” she murmured. “I know enough to know you would have to take on any job you could get.”

I ground my own cigarette out. “So what am I in this? Your patsy?”

She reached over and touched my cheek. “Not at all,” she said. “You’re the one taking all the credit. You’re the face behind everything that’s going wrong for them right now. You get your credibility back, and I don’t end up chewing lead at the bottom of the river.”

She was right too.

Suddenly, I was on speaking terms with the D.A. again. Suddenly, I was being written up in less derogatory ways by Miss Bianco. And all because I’d walked into a trap laid by a dame who was twice as smart as I was. Hell, I’d take a bet and say she was twice as smart as anyone I’d ever met.

“Why not go to the cops?” I pointed out. “Give them what you know. Right now, you could get yourself killed.”

She leaned a little closer. “I’ve got my reasons for playing the game my way,” she said. “You have one question left.”

“What happens if we do it?” I asked, reaching for the belt of her robe, loosening the knot one bit at a time. “What happens if we win?”

She pressed her lips to mine. “We’ll find out,” she murmured.

The robe slipped from her shoulders and down her arms, and I was all out of questions.

 

___________________________________________

 

It wasn’t a big surprise that Shepherd wasn’t impressed by my vanishing act.

I remembered to call him the next day, but by then, the safe house had already been wrecked by the welcoming committee, and there was no sign of me. He sounded like he was spitting tacks, and only agreed to meet me to make sure that I wasn’t ‘damn well plugging myself into the electric chair again’. 

Rose called on Jimmy again to be my driver, and I was dropped at the boardwalk just before three in the afternoon. The sky was heavy and dark, with the promise of rain looming. The sea was whipped up in sharp white ridges, the rest of the waves a heavy grey.

I made my way to the diner slowly. 

My leg was aching like hell, but that was no real surprise. It had been one hell of a day, and Rose had vanished out into the night before I could ask her if she had any painkillers. I didn’t stop to ask what kind of business kept her out at those hours. With Gina, it could be anything. 

For the first time, Shepherd was waiting for me.

His arms were folded on the edge of the table, and there was a furious expression creeping onto his normally placid features.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded in a low voice, as I carefully slid into the seat opposite him. He’d been gracious enough to grab the largest booth, and I stretched my leg out. “Running off like that? You could have been killed!”

“If I’d stayed where I was,” I replied, reaching under the table to press a hand to my thigh, wincing. “I would have been.”

“Jesus,” Shepherd swore quietly, rubbing his brow, his hat sliding up. “So that demolition zone in the apartment wasn’t you?”

“I got a tip that there was a welcoming committee on the way,” I said with a shrug. I raised a hand to the waitress. She knew me well enough to know what I wanted. “A friend sent a car to pick me up.”

“You trust them?”

I looked across the table at him. “I do.”

Shepherd leaned back in his seat. “You could have called me.”

“There wouldn’t have been time,” I said. “My friend was the one who warned me and sent the car. I would have called sooner to let you know I was okay, but things got kind of hot for a while, and then I was out of pain meds and I wouldn’t have made any sense.”

Shepherd’s lips twitched grudgingly. “Gold, even on pain meds, you don’t make any sense.”

I laughed, taking off my hat and dropping it on the seat beside me. “And there’s the Phil I know and deplore,” I said. 

He took his own hat off, glancing at the waitress as she brought over my coffee. He waited until she walked away. “So how did this friend of yours know about the welcoming committee?” he asked. “Only a handful of people knew where we were putting you.”

I poured sugar into the cup, stirring it until it frothed, and didn’t look at him. “I think you just answered your own question.”

“One of my guys?” Shepherd sounded shocked at the thought.

I glanced up at him. “At least one,” I said. “Don’t think cops are incorruptible, Phil. There lies the way of madness.”

“I’m not stupid, John.”

I stirred the coffee once more. “Never said that,” I said quietly, setting the spoon down. “But you have to know who to trust now more than ever. Times are changing, Phil. We can’t have any loose canons.”

He snorted. “Did King get to you? That sounds like something he’d say.”

“He might be right.” I picked up the coffee cup, cradling it between my hands. I’d finished my smokes earlier in the day, and I was starting to feel the urge for one. “Go fishing. See who bites, and then keep a close eye on them. Friends close, but enemies closer.”

Shepherd watched me in silence for several minutes. “This isn’t messing around anymore, is it? You’re going after them.”

“We,” I said quietly. 

“You and your friend?”

I remembered the D.A. and what he said to me in the hospital. I wasn’t the only one who wanted the Royles out of the picture. There were a lot of people, some of the allies, some of the enemies, all of them with one goal in mind.

“Not just us,” I said. “You. The D.A. Everyone in the force who wants the Royles gone. They’ve been in charge of this town for long enough.”

Shepherd smiled. “About damned time.”

I snorted. “As if I’m your only weapon against them.”

“You forget how much of influence you still have in the Fifth,” Shepherd said. “They knew King didn’t have any choice when he got rid of you, but they’ve never let anyone else use your office. They want the Royles gone more than ever, especially after Astor. But you didn’t seem to be doing anything. Made them think it wasn’t possible.”

“And getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter looked like I was back in the game?”

Shepherd grinned. “Busting into a warehouse that happened to be a Royle one helped.”

I rolled my eyes. “Next time your boys need motivation, I’m not letting anyone go a round with me. I’ve seen enough of the hospital walls.”

“Sounds fair,” he said. He reached under the table and lifted up his briefcase. It was an old, worn-out thing, but I knew he loved it, a last gift from his father, before his old man passed. It was embossed on the lid with his initials, and I knew he’d carry it with him until it dropped to pieces in his hands. “I stopped by your office. It had been turned over.”

It wasn’t unexpected. “How bad?”

“They took anything that looked important,” he said. “Files, notes, records.” He lifted a book out of his case, closed the lid, and put the case back down. “This was on the floor, under the desk.”

I stared at the book. Of all the things they had left behind, it was the only thing that mattered, and the only one I wanted to keep. Shepherd could tell and slid it across the desk to me, flipping it open to the pages with the count.

“Every day?” he said quietly.

“Since they took him away,” I said. 

Shepherd reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a pen and held it out. “You’re missing a few,” he said. I looked at him, then took the pen and started filling in all the days that had passed since I was last near my office. 

“Is he doing okay?”

He nodded. “Keeping out of trouble,” he said. “Worried about you, as usual. Especially after you ended up where you did. He wanted to come back, but he’s smart enough to understand how dangerous it could be if he did.”

“Once this is over, he can come home,” I said, even though I had a feeling that - with Rose French’s help - this would go all the way to hell and there was every chance there wouldn’t be any coming back. 

“If you want to get a message to him…”

I hesitated. I was staying in a hotel with hundreds of people calling out from hundreds of rooms. It still wasn’t worth the risk that someone at the switchboard wasn’t being bribed to keep track of which hotel room called out to which number.

“Give him the telephone number I gave you,” I said. They could keep tabs on outgoing, but incoming was a whole other thing. “I don’t think I’ll be getting out much, for the next few days anyway.”

“You’re here.”

I laughed. “Because you would have shot me yourself next time I showed up, if I didn’t come out and let you see I wasn’t being held hostage or tortured.”

“Again,” he pointed out. “You have a gift for walking straight into trouble.”

“Not anymore,” I said.

Shepherd looked at me doubtfully. “What changed?”

“Some damn fool took a hammer to my kneecap,” I said, smirking. “I’m not going to be walking into anything for a while.”

Shepherd shook his head, laughing. “You get the crap beaten out of you, you get tortured, you’re top of the Royle hit list, and yet, you still manage to be the biggest asshole this side of the Atlantic.”

I finished my coffee. “You practise and you might get there one day, Phil,” I said. I picked up my book, closing it over. The ink was still damp, but I knew Jimmy was due back any time, and I didn’t want to be out in the open any longer than I needed to be.

 

_____________________________________________

 

The hotel room became as much a prison as the hospital after a few days.

Gina was taking it personally that someone had leaked the news about my welcoming party, and was doing spot checks on all staff. I had to admire the irony that the person she chose to grill everyone was in fact the very person she was looking for.

Out of pity, Rose brought some books to keep me occupied. To my surprise, every one of them had sections underlined. I knew the code. I’d seen it before. I was starting to see how my girl was getting so much information out of the Royle offices, without taking anything out with her that she didn’t take in herself. It took time, gathering the information from each book, but by the time I was done, I was armed with shipping numbers, supply codes, and more importantly, addresses.

I couldn’t call out from the room, because Shepherd’s number was manned by more than just him, so I had to wait, sifting through the information Rose had provided until he remembered our arrangement and called me. 

Day after day, I would work through books and Shepherd would call. Information would be exchanged, and I would go back to the books again. 

Bennie had called twice since Shepherd had provided the number, though he had to wait for special permission on Saturday afternoons. He didn’t say where he was staying or who with, but he sounded well and happy enough, and it was better than knowing he was forced into perfect behaviour by the Mother Superior.

When he asked if he could come home or visit, I had to lie. I felt like a pilot on a ship, watching the fog, trying to sight land, with no idea whether I was about to be smashed on the rocks or come into a safe port.

Whether the information was useful or relevant to whatever the detectives at the Fifth were working on, I had no idea. Some of the names were familiar, but it was so long since I’d been to the department and see the walls of intel that I knew I was missing out on a lot.

I was seated on the couch with another book when she returned one evening.

It was exhausting, breaking all the codes, but from the look on her face, her day had been even worse.

“Drink?” I suggested.

She nodded and poured herself a glass, and knocked it back in one. A second followed, then she sank into the armchair, her head falling back against the back of the chair. Her eyes were half-closed. “You’ve been doing my books, haven’t you?”

“Kept me busy,” I replied, holding up the latest one. “How’s she taking it?”

“A dozen raids across the city in the last two days,” she said, toeing off her shoes. One of her stockings had a run in it, from shin to knee, but she didn’t seem to have noticed it. “Last I heard, two more of her five main warehouses have been seized by the DA’s office.” She gave me a knowing half-smile. “Or should I say two more warehouses of unknown ownership?”

“She’s good at covering her tracks,” I acknowledged. “Years of practise.”

“She’ll slip soon,” Rose said, smothering a yawn with the back of her hand. “I haven’t seen her this angry before. She never loses her rag in front of the staff, but today, she just about socked someone in the jaw.”

“You?”

She smiled, her eyes closed. “I’m her right hand,” she murmured. “You can’t hit your own right hand.”

I stared at her. She never said anything much about the work she did with Gina, but now, she was so damn tired, I knew I could probably ask her anything, and she would tell me. Her eyes open, slices of white and azure shadowed by her lashes.

“You didn’t say you were so high up,” I said quietly, “or that she trusts you.”

She laughed briefly. “Gina Royle doesn’t trust anyone,” she said, struggling to her feet and going back for another drink. “The closest she comes is expecting you to continue to be as loyal as you have been so far, but if she doubts you, she won’t hesitate to take you down. She doesn’t… do well with attachments.”

“That’s not a big surprise.”

Rose looked down at her glass, as she poured another measure. “Sometimes, it’s better to have no ties,” she murmured. When she turned, she smiled. “I’m on a bit of a downer tonight,” she said. “Sorry. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“It’s no matter,” I assured her. “We’re working and taking them down a piece at a time. We can rest when we’re dead.”

“Amen,” she said with a brighter smile. “I’m going to run a bath, I think. You want to use the bathroom first?”

I nodded, rising. “I’ll put the water on for you,” I said. It would take me so long to get around the bathroom that by the time I was done, the tub would be full already. She stepped around me to sprawl on the bed, and I made my way to the bathroom.

I was still in there when the telephone rang.

My heart damn near stopped when I heard her pick up. Urgency made my hands clumsy, and it was a good minute before I half-fell through the bathroom door to see her perched on the arm of the couch, the receiver in her hand.

“It’s for you,” she said, a curious expression in her eyes.

I took the receiver. It was Bennie. Rose disappeared into the bathroom, and I sat down heavily on the couch.

“Who was that, dad?”

I looked at the closed door of the bathroom. “A friend, son,” I said quietly. 

“She sounds nice,” he said. There was a pause. “Is she your woman?”

Perhaps it was optimistic to anticipate it, but I answered, “Yes” before I could think to say otherwise. The next ten minutes were filled with a barrage of questions, some I answered, some I didn’t, some I couldn’t.

He sounded happier about it than I did, and when he eventually had to get off the line, I felt like I had tried to run a lap of the city block. He wanted to come home. He wanted to have a family. He wanted us to be happy, or at least like we were before. He seemed to think if I had a girl, he would have a stepmom, and everything would go back to normal.

Damn it all.

I was still sitting there when Rose emerged from the bathroom. Her hair was wet, hanging in dark curls around her face, and her skin was flushed. She looked even more exhausted than before. 

“Your son?” she murmured, crossing the floor to the bed.

“Yes.”

She stood beside the bed, her hands clasped in front of her. “You didn’t say you had a kid.”

I nodded. “Figured everyone knew,” I said. “The whole mess with the snitch got him taken away from me. He’s being looked after out of state.”

“You miss him?”

“He’s my kid,” I said quietly. 

“Do you?” I nodded. “That’s why you took my father’s case, isn’t it?”

I got up from the chair, limped towards the bed. There wasn’t going to be anything but sleep tonight, but I didn’t want anything more than that. “You do what you have to,” I said, sitting down on my side of the bed, unfastening my shirt. 

She sat down on the other side of the bed. I could see her back reflected in the polished glass of the beside lamp. She had her head in her hands and I’d never seen her so down. “You should have said something.”

I folded the shirt, laid it In my lap. “I lost him,” I said quietly. “There’s nothing more to tell.”

“Nothing more to tell,” she murmured. I saw her rise, lift the edge of the covers and slip into the bed. I sat in silence, then finished undressing and slid into the opposite side of the bed. I could feel the warmth of her by my arm, but it felt like she was a world away.

 

__________________________________________

 

Rose hardly ever came back to the hotel after that night.

She said Gina was running her ragged, which was true, but she was staying away because of Bennie. I didn’t know why. I could make a hundred and one guesses. I could take easy money that she thought I should be with my boy, instead of giving the Royles hell. 

I’d be the first to admit that I’m not the best father in the world, but I knew for a fact that if I went to join Bennie, Gina would still get eyes on me somehow. She’d always be suspicious, and no matter what happened, my boy wouldn’t be safe.

Still, every day she left, there was a book on the coffee table.

It went on for three weeks, and then, she stopped coming back at all.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence that only four days later, Shepherd called up. It wasn’t at the usual time, which made it all the more disconcerting. 

They had someone down at the DA’s office, someone who wanted to speak to the person causing all the problems for the Royles. It turned out that even though I was closed away, my name was being linked to all the raids by the Ice Queen. Shepherd denied knowing how she got her information, but I could tell he was grinning about it.

“Can you get down here?” he asked. “Because this guy will only speak to you.”

I rubbed my jaw. I’d given up shaving, the razor too blunt to be of use. I looked like a damned hobo. The only time I’d been out in the last fortnight was to go to the hospital to get my cast removed. My leg was still done in, but it was easier to walk now.

“If you can drive down to the corner of Second and Somerville, you’ll find me,” I said. “Half an hour, and I’ll be there.”

He pulled up there, and I knew I must have looked unrecognisable when he reached for his gun as I climbed into the car. He stared at me, then bust out laughing. “God, Gold,” he said, “have you been living in a dumpster?”

“Not even close,” I replied, setting my right leg down carefully, then pulled the door shut. “I’m going for inconspicuous.”

“You’re going for drunken bum,” he replied, shaking his head, as he pulled away from the sidewalk. “You been keeping okay? Really?”

“Think I’d be lying on the telephone?”

He shrugged, his eyes on the road. “I don’t know who had you. For all I know, they could have had a gun to your head the whole time.” He turned down onto Roosevelt, then glanced at me. “So. You. Okay?”

I nodded. “Could be worse.”

One side of his mouth tilted. “Good.”

“So, who’s this snitch?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said. “He went straight to the DA. No one else knows why he’s there at all. He strung out a tale about rising crime in his area, and wanting to bring it to the DA’s attention. King called me in and told me to call you.” 

“Useful that I don’t look like myself, then,” I said dryly. “Wouldn’t want him hung out to dry for fraternising with the enemy.”

Shepherd nodded. “He won’t talk in front of King or me. This is all on you.”

I was unloaded out of the car at the DA’s office, and Shepherd led me up the stairs. He put a hand on my shoulder, like I was some kind of offender. I probably looked the part: unshaven, no oil on my hair, not hat, a trench coat over my suit.

He left me in a deserted office. There were certificates and photographs on the wall, but the desk was clear, and there was a notepad and pen laid out for me. Whoever it was, he had to be important to get a whole office stripped out so he could do his talking.

I settled behind the desk and massaged my knee. 

It had better be worth it.

Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen, then the door opened.

A man stepped in, accompanied by a girl. He was in his thirties, she was about ten, both of them brown-haired. Both of them were impeccably dressed in the most expensive of clothes, and I knew his face the second he stepped into the room. 

“Timothy Jefferson,” I murmured.

He was holding the girl’s hand so tightly that she winced and tugged her fingers free, wrapping her small hand around his forearm instead. 

“You’re Gold?” he said.

“Called in from my hiding place,” I agreed. “You wanted to see me?”

Jefferson sat down on the other side of the desk, and lifted the girl to sit in his lap. “I’ve been keeping track of what you’ve been doing,” he said. “Miss Bianco’s made sure that everyone knows exactly how much trouble you’ve been giving Gina.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said, flipping open the cover of the book. “I just pass on the information I gather. If it’s being useful,” I shrugged, tapping the pen against the desk. “Well, I’m hardly able to go running in, all guns blazing now.”

“I heard,” he said. He was watching me intently. 

I didn’t know much about him. He dealt in fashion, and that wasn’t something I cared for. All I knew was that he had lost his wife in tragic circumstances some years before, and he had become something of a recluse with his only child, the girl currently sitting on his lap.

I leaned back in the chair watching him. This office didn’t feel like mine. It was too neat, too clean, too polished. Sunlight cut through the blinds in stripes on the black and white checks of the floor tiles. Still, if I could act like it was mine, that would be enough.

Jefferson put his arm around his daughter’s waist. One of his feet was tapping, a nervous gesture, and she leaned back into him, as if she could tell how worried he was.

“What is it you want to tell me?” I asked finally.

“I need protection,” he said, wrapping his other arm around his daughter too. “For Grace and for me.”

“Protection?” I paused, unscrewing the cap of the pen. “You work in fashion, Mr Jefferson. I don’t recall that being high-risk trading.”

“Fashion goes everywhere in the world, Mr Gold,” he said quietly, implicitly.

I looked at him, then at the girl. “Your kid should wait outside,” I suggested.

Jefferson’s arms tightened around his daughter, and she squeezed them comfortingly. “She stays with me,” he said, looking warily at the door, as if someone might come in and snatch the child from him. “I already lost her mother when I tried to walk away. I’m not losing her too.”

That was a sentiment I understood. 

“If that’s how you want to do it.” I removed the pen lid and sat up. “Why do you trust me to be able to keep you safe?”

He laughed nervously. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Her public enemy number one, and she hasn’t been able to lay a finger on you. You know the right people to keep people on the down-low. You know how to stay alive. No one ever did before.”

I wondered how fast he would run if I told him it was all down to one of Gina’s own people.

“I know the right people to trust,” I said quietly. “But if you give us information we can use, you know you can’t go back to your lives, don’t you? Not until this is over.”

“I’d be happy in a shed in Wisconsin,” Timothy Jefferson, one of the wealthiest men in the city, said. “Just find us a way out of town, without her knowing about it, and we’ll go and we won’t come back, no matter what.”

It wasn’t my promise to make. King would have the last say in it. 

Still, Shepherd got Bennie out to safety, and no one had found him so far.

“When we’re done here, I’ll see to it that you’re given a way out,” I said. “Now, talk.”

It was a simple enough tale. 

He was a rising star in fashion with a mountain of debts behind him. He had taken out loans from the wrong kinds of people, and when his name was spreading down the coast and across state lines, that was when the debts were called in. They didn’t want them paid in cash, even though he could have paid them ten times that amount. No, they wanted service in trade, and to ensure his cooperation and good behaviour, his wife and newborn daughter were forfeit.

Jefferson had no choice but to do as ordered, and his wife had no idea. When she found out, she insisted on going to the police, and that very same day was hit by a car and killed. That was when Jefferson had retreated to his manor with his daughter, and rarely emerged. 

His business still flourished, and still carried shipments on the authority of the chief. There were no names used, but Jefferson could remember the sharks he dealt with, and everyone knew who those sharks were affiliated to. 

He described the shipments he was asked to carry. There was money-laundering, which added another mark against the already lengthy tally the Royles had accumulated. There were models who mysteriously arrived before the fashion shows and never were seen again. There were parcels of various kinds of drugs.

“One of my shipments goes out tonight,” he said tersely. His daughter’s hands were resting over his. Otherwise, it looked like he might have squeezed his fingers until the joints snapped under the pressure. “I had to get your people to go for it. I need to get out of it now. She’s going down, and if I don’t get out now, she’ll take us down with her.”

“Can you give me a place and a time?” I asked, flipping another page in the book.

He nodded. “And I can give you the name of the person in charge of it,” he said. “Gina’s pet cop-killer.”

I lifted my eyes from the book. “Cop-killer? The man who killed Astor?”

He laughed, a strange, manic sound. “Not a man,” he said. “She goes by Bella.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jefferson wasn’t lying.

I knew that right off the bat. No one who held onto their kid as tightly as he did was going to lie. He wouldn’t risk getting on the bad side of an ex-cop who was already known for having a violent temper.

I just didn’t know whether he was right.

Bella, Rose French, was handing over enough information to sink Gina and the Royles to the bottom of the ocean, but he insisted she was the stooge who had put the bullet in Astor’s brain, and he’d been there. Gina liked to make sure her people knew what she was capable of. 

I didn’t want to ask for details in front of the kid, but Jefferson gave them anyway: Astor was caught selling out. They didn’t know he was a cop at the time, just thought he was a leak, and he was given a going over. They beat him so long and hard that he would have given up his grandmother, Jefferson said, and he confessed to being a cop, working alone. 

That was the final straw. Bella was the one to take Gina’s pistol. Afterwards, she had smiled and said it was like putting a wounded dog out of its misery. That had delighted Gina. She always did like the ruthless ones.

Jefferson looked pale as death as he told the tale. His kid was sitting with her hands over her ears and her eyes closed. She’d probably seen way too many things, heard them too. No one who got dragged into the mess of the Royle affairs ever got out clean.

“Can you describe this Bella?” I asked. It had to be her. There was no one else it could be.

He described my girl down to her dress size. The guy was rocking like a war vet with shellshock, and his kid unravelled herself enough to wrap her arms around his neck. It looked like it calmed him down.

I looked at the notebook, then back at him. “Stay put, Mr Jefferson,” I said, rising unsteadily and leaning on my stick. “I’ll be back in five minutes.” He nodded, but I could have tap-danced out the room and he wouldn’t have noticed. His kid was gently stroking his cheek and he looked like he was about to weep, and no man wants to see that.

Shepherd was lurking in the deserted hall, keeping away anyone who wanted to look too closely. He pushed off from the wall. “You got anything?”

“Everything,” I replied. 

And it was everything. 

I’d found Astor’s killer, even if I didn’t want to believe it. Shepherd looked delighted. I felt anything but. The dame was trouble, I’d known it from the first, but I never imagined she’d have the balls to pull the trigger and kill a cop. She was bringing down Gina, but how deep had she waded into the crap to get what she needed?

“Do we have enough to bring her down?”

I held out the notebook to him. “Your eyes only, Phil, and King if he has to know,” I said quietly. “There’s a shipment going out tonight, a big one. Don’t let anyone know what they’re going to be raiding or where. It has to be done hard and fast, and no one can leak it to Gina.”

“Got it,” he said. “What’s he asking for?”

I glanced over my shoulder, through the window in the door. “Jefferson and his kid need a way out of town, quick and quiet, before it all goes down. Gina’ll know he rolled on her, and he’s given us more than enough to get into witness protection for life.”

Shepherd looked at the book, then back at me. “Then why don’t you look pleased?” he asked. “You’re getting what you wanted.”

I laughed quietly. “There’s always a price,” I said. “One condition. You let me go in on the raid. Give me the time you’ll break up the party and I’ll be there. A last feather in my cap to wipe out all that disgrace.”

Shepherd glanced down at my leg. “You going to be okay for that?”

“I didn’t say I’d be leading the charge,” I replied. “Just give me the time and the place, and I’ll try my best not to fall on my face.”

Shepherd nodded grimly. “I’ll call you at your usual place,” he said. “You want a squad car to pick you up?”

“I can make my own way,” I said. “But you have to get Jefferson and his kid out of town first. That has to be the priority. The Royles already took out his wife when he tried to rabbit before. You need to get him somewhere safe. Him and his kid.”

“Getting soft, Gold?”

I looked at him. “They’ve broken up too many families already,” I said, leaning heavily on my cane. “If I can keep them from breaking up what’s left of this one, it’s a start in balancing up my ledger. I’ve done enough to go way into the red. I need to go the other way to make things right.”

Shepherd flipped through the pages of the notebook. “Will he trust me?”

“Unlikely,” I admitted. “He’s only come to me because I’ve been standing against Gina and haven’t died yet.”

“Yet? Generous of him to put it that way.”

I shrugged. “He’s got it right,” I said. “This is going all the way, Shepherd, and I don’t know if I’ll be standing when it ends, but I’m not getting off until the end of the line.”

“And if that’s what goes down, what do I tell Bennie?”

The bastard could have at least been a man about it and slugged me.

“I’m not dead yet, Phil,” I said, putting out my empty hand to the door handle, “and I don’t plan on things going that way.” I nodded to the book. “You take care of that side of things, and I’ll be there. I want to see how it all ends.”

“Jefferson first,” Shepherd said. “Give me half an hour. I’ll find an out.”

“Half an hour? You sure that’s enough?”

Shepherd smirked, the cocky son of a gun. “Don’t you trust me, Gold?”

I snorted. “Take an hour,” I replied, “And it better be good.”

I went back into the room. Jefferson looked calmer, but his kid was still wrapped around him, one of his hands tangled into her hair. They were talking quietly to one another, but both looked up when I opened the door.

“We’re getting you a one-way ticket out of town,” I said. “Don’t know where, but it’ll be out of the way and no one will know where you are. Not even me.”

“Good,” Jefferson breathed, hugging his daughter to him. “Good.”

His daughter looked up at him. “Will you miss our house?”

He looked down at her, and for a second, he didn’t look scared. “Not as long as you’re with me, Gracie,” he said.

I had to turn away.

 

___________________________________________

 

When I got back to the hotel, I started to clean myself up, trying to keep my mind off everything that Jefferson had told me about the woman who owned the room I was in. I didn't want to believe she was a cop-killer. She was working against Gina more than anyone, and I couldn't believe she had murdered Astor in cold blood or laughed about it.

I didn't want to think about it, even though I knew I would find out tonight. If there was going to be a showdown, I was going in as myself. I'd shaved and cleaned myself up, even oiled my hair, when the telephone rang. I was expecting it. Shepherd was as good as his word.

I made my way towards the telephone. My leg was out of the cast, but it still ached like hell to put any weight on it. The telephone kept right on ringing until I reached it, and I drew a breath before I picked it up.

"Yeah?"

"Gold," Shepherd's voice was tight. It only got like that when he was mad. "You got a wireless?"

I frowned, glancing along the dresser to the small wireless. "Sure."

"Put on SBN," he said.

It took a second with the static hissing and crackling, and I sat down to listen. It was the middle of a news report.

"...the victims have not yet been named, but questions have been raised about how safe our city is, if prominent members of society and children can be gunned down right outside the District Attorney's office."

I switched the damned thing off and limped back to the telephone. My hand was shaking when I picked up the receiver. "You were meant to get them out," I said, remembering the smiling little kid, all bright-eyed and hopeful. All she wanted was to stay with her father. 

"I had an out for them," Shepherd said dully. "But someone put two and two together. They saw him coming into King's office and gave the Royles the head's up that he might be turning."

"Tell me you plugged the leak."

"We did, but too late," he said.

"You're not wrong," I said, running a hand over my head. Another family screwed over by the Royles. Another family broken up and put in the dirt. "Was it quick?"

"Drive-by," Shepherd replied. He sounded like hell. "We were sneaking them out in King’s big car he uses to get around without being disturbed. It was a chopper squad. There was hardly a damn piece left of the car when they were done.” He exhaled. “The driver was torn to shreds. One of our people is still in surgery. The kid lasted an hour longer than her old man. Head wound. The only blessing is that she was out of it from the second it hit."

I leaned back. Times like this, I knew I shouldn't be sitting in a fancy chair in a high-class hotel. I should be in my office down in the Fifth, working the case, doing things the right way. I should always have been there. It should never have come to this. "You got a timetable for tonight? One that she doesn't know about?"

"No one knows it but you and me," Shepherd replied. "We're hitting at eight."

Eight. Two hours away.

"I'll see you there," I said. "Don't be late."

It was tempting to grab the liquor, give myself a little liquid courage, but it wouldn't help, not tonight, not when I needed to be on the level. I took a smoke from the packet Shepherd had given me, and my hands shook so damn much that I could barely even light it. 

Jefferson wasn't a great guy, but he had his priorities straight. He was doing the right thing by his kid and it got them both killed. 

It had to end tonight.

I was at the warehouse in the factory district for seven.

Shepherd had his plans, but I had my own. He didn't know about Rose, and I wanted to find her and get answers before he got there. He would come crashing in at eight. That gave me time enough to bust in and to tie up loose ends.

It wasn't easy. 

The warehouse in question didn't have any obvious guards on it, but the Royles didn't get to where they were without being cautious. I dodged two, hiding in shadows, and found my way to the fire escape the snaked up the back wall of the building. There was a guard there, but my luck held. He was so boozed up against the chill that he didn't even make a sound when I brained him with my pistol butt.

It was tough going, climbing up the fire escape. My leg was aching like hell by the time I got to a window on the upper level. The room inside was dark, and there was no sign of anyone, so I sat on the ledge for a moment, caught my breath, then took out a switchblade and worked at one of the windows. The frames were metal-edged and rusted, but I managed to lever one open. It moaned like it was in pain, but no one came running.

The room wasn't a big one, probably an office once, but now there were cracks in the ceiling and the smell of damp hung on the air. The breeze through the open window stirred up a zephyr of dust across the wooden floor. 

I climbed through the window as carefully as I could, but the climb had taken its toll, and when I put my right foot on solid ground, my leg gave way. I fell as lightly as I could, scrambling into the shadows on my hands and ass, and groped for my gun. Pain shot from head to toe, and my hands were shaking, but I got the pistol out and cocked.

It was silent, and I prayed to a God I'd long ignored that no one had heard.

I heard footsteps approaching, light, clacking with every step. It was a woman, that was for sure, but whether it was Rose or Gina or some other broad, I didn't know.

Say what you like, but the Big Guy has a hell of a sense of humour. I guess I was getting what I deserved for yelling at a nun. 

Using the wall as leverage, I struggled back upright. There wasn't much light this high in the building, which could work for me. With my back to the wall, I edged deeper into the shadows, as far as the window as I could get. A couple of floorboards creaked underfoot and I froze up like a rabbit in the headlights. 

The footsteps were too close now. I couldn't go any further without risking being heard.

I took a breath, raised my gun and levelled it at the half-closed door.

I could barely hear the footsteps over the pound of my heart in my ears. The door moved an inch, the hinges screaming in. The woman was outlined against the glass panel in the door, barely visible in the dim light, and the first I saw of her was the barrel of a snub-nosed revolver.

I held my gun steady. The metal felt slick and warm against my palm.

The scent of jasmine reached me before I saw her face.

"Rose."

She stepped out from behind the shelter of the door to face me, her revolver pointed at me. Even by the dusty light, she looked pale. Her right side was cast in twilight, her left steeped in shadows. It suited her, somewhere on the line between angel and devil. "Johnny."

"You gonna put your gun down?"

She lifted one shoulder, a lady's shrug. "You?"

"Not right now," I said.

I didn't expect her to lower hers, but she did, her right hand falling to hang by her side. "Thought you might be here," she said quietly. "Jefferson rolled?"

"He wanted to get out," I said, shifting my grip and holding my pistol steady. "But you knew that."

She shook her head. "I didn't know a squad was sent out for them," she said. "Especially not after the kid."

"Gina's right hand and you didn't know?"

Her expression was unreadable. "I'm not by her side twenty-four seven," she said. "Did you bring back-up this time?"

"Not yet," I said. "Half an hour." I took a step closer, then another. "Is she here?"

"What do you think?" she asked quietly.

I grimaced. Of course she wouldn't be. She would never put herself in a situation where she could be caught red-handed. "Call her," I said. I was close enough to put my gun's muzzle right to her head. It would have been easy to do it. "Get her down here."

"What makes you think she'd come?" she asked, her voice tight. 

I smiled at her, but didn't show any teeth. "Because you're going to tell her you've caught me snooping around. You know she'll want to come and deal with me herself."

Give her credit, the way her eyes widened was convincing. "Johnny, no," she said. "She'll give the order and any one of the guys downstairs would give you a lead lobotomy before you could blink."

"Not you?" I said. "God knows you've got the experience of killing cops."

It was like she turned to stone right there and then. "Jefferson?" she said, her voice taut.

"Said you put on quite a show," I said, watching her. Her eyes were on me, half her face hidden in darkness. She was good. She was damned good. "Right between the eyes. Nice and neat." I gazed at her. "Like putting an animal out of its misery."

Her pretty mouth narrowed to a thin line. "It was a mercy," she said quietly. "He knew what he was getting himself into and he knew he was going to die on that floor. Gina's boys were just warming up." She met my eyes with defiance. "I gave him the most painless way out that I could."

I lowered my revolver. "You knew who he was."

"Of course I knew who he was," she replied. "He was my handler."

I felt like I'd been punched in the chest. Holy hell. She was one of Astor's own plants? "And you stayed after that?"

"It wasn't like I could just walk out the door," she said. "Not after killing a cop in front of witnesses." One side of her mouth turned up in something that sure as hell wasn't a smile. "I wasn't about to run after everything Greg sacrificed to bring them down. He knew he was going to die. He was willing to do anything to bring them down, and if his death meant I looked good in Gina's eyes..."

"That son of a bitch," I said quietly. "He let you off him."

"I asked you how far you would go," she said. "There's pretty much nothing I won't do. Do the brave thing, remember. Even if it damns you."

"Why?"

Her expression was closed. "I have my reasons," she said. She glanced over her shoulder towards the door. "You should get out of here."

"No."

"Johnny, this is no time for games," she said, looking back at me. "You have a son. Go home. Be safe. Be a family."

I shook my head. "Until they're gone, I can't ever be safe and neither can Bennie." I grasped her shoulder. "You asked how far I'd go. I'm going all the way."

She looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. "You trust me?"

I nodded. No point in beating around the bush. "I do."

She rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to my lips. "You'd better," she said, then clocked me with her gun.

 

___________________________________

 

I came to in a brightly-lit room. 

My head was aching from Rose’s blow, and I could taste blood in my mouth. It took a second before my eyes would open, but when they did, I kind of wish I’d left them closed. I was sitting on a chair, and my arms were tied down. I could see blood soaking the legs of my pants and my shirt was soaked in it.

From the feel of it, there was a cut on one of my hands, the source of God knew how much blood, but apart from my head and my knee, the rest of me seemed to be intact. I must have looked like hell, all blood and bruises, which had to be part of her final play. I groaned, letting my head roll on my shoulders.

Rose was sitting in another chair on the far side of the room. One leg was crossed over the other, and she might have been a dame at a bar, if not for the blood spatters all over her legs and skirt. She was ignoring me, all her attention on the small pocket knife she was cleaning with her lacy handkerchief. 

I looked around the rest of the room through half-closed eyes.

It was as different as could be to the top floor: solid brick walls, no way to easily bust out, not a window in sight. A couple of Gina’s flunkeys were standing by the door. If they were given the order, I’d be putty in their hands.

“So you’re back with us, Mr Gold,” Rose said, rising from her seat. “Maybe now we can continue our conversation.”

“Don’t waste your time.” I recognised Gina’s voice instantly. I lifted my head to see her standing in the doorway, wrapped up in a trench coat that covered her from neck to knee. Her hands were in her pockets and she was smiling, thin and cold. “Johnny is a stubborn boy. He doesn’t play nice.”

Rose laughed throatily. “I didn’t say I wanted to play nice,” she said. She stepped up behind me, grasped my shoulder and squeezed. I groaned like she was digging her fingers into a wound and she chuckled and added, “He makes such wonderful sounds when he’s hurting.”

Gina raised one hand, dismissing the two thugs standing on either side of the door. “I don’t doubt it,” she murmured, walking closer one elegant step at a time, her heels clacking on the concrete floor. She didn’t take her eyes off mine, and Rose took that instant to let the knife in her hand slip. It dropped, nice and near, into my hand, blade against my wrist and my restraints. “He’s become a real pain in my ass.”

I grinned at her. My teeth were bloody, even if I didn’t know how. Out of her sight, I was dragging the blade over and over against the cords at my wrist, slicing my hand to ribbons, but I could feel the restraints slackening. “So I finally did something right, huh?”

She backhanded me, her ring cracking open the skin over my cheekbone. “You could have had it all, you know,” she said, turning over her hand to examine her bloodied ring. “I could have given you back your son, your apartment, everything you lost when you beat on Sid.”

“You couldn’t give back what you took from me,” I said, baring my teeth. 

She bent over me, bracing her hands on the back of the chair. “Don’t underestimate what I can do, Johnny,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “You’ll find out I have friends in high places, and they’re more than willing to help me out.”

“And how quick do you think they’ll drop you when they find out you’ve been locked up?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “You’re still playing that tune?” she said. “Johnny, you’re all alone and no one’s coming to find you.” She withdrew her other hand from her pocket, a neat little revolver nestled snugly in her palm. She traced the muzzle against my cheek. “You’re going to take a nice long swim tonight.”

“With your own fair hands for once?” I said, leaning as far back as I could in the chair. Rose’s hand was still on my shoulder, and she tensed her fingers. This game was going to go all the way, right down to the gates of Hell. 

Gina laughed. “For you, Johnny,” she said, dragging the chilly metal up my brow and to the centre of my forehead, “I’ll make an exception.” She shook her head. “Poor little Johnny Gold. Little fish in a big pond. Never saw the shark until it was right on top of him.”

I could see her finger tense on the trigger and froze, froze up completely. All I could think of was Bennie, that I’d never see him again.

Rose’s hand moved like lightning and the revolver cracked, the bullet tearing across my crown and hitting the wall. The gun spun from Gina’s hand, skittering across the floor, and Gina turned in fury on Rose.

“What the hell…?”

“We’re done,” Rose said, low and dangerous. “No more. The cops are on their way and we are done.”

Gina’s eyes widened, and if it hadn’t been one hell of a situation to be in, her expression might have made me laugh myself sick. “You?” she said, and she looked and sounded like her world had just been pulled out from under her feet.

“Me,” Rose said. I couldn’t see her face, but she was circling around behind me. I tugged at the ropes, cutting faster. 

Gina pulled open her coat and I saw the gleam of metal a split-second before Rose barrelled around me and tackled the other woman to the ground. 

I cursed, as Rose grappled with Gina, both of them fighting over the gun. Gina had the advantage. She was taller, broader, and had a hell of a lot more weight to throw around compared to Rose, but Rose was running on pure rage.

There was blood on Gina’s face, her cheek clawed open, and Rose all but growled as she was pinned down on the floor by Gina’s weight, thrashing her legs, her skirt and petticoats tearing from the force of her kick. I couldn’t see the gun, but I had one hand free, and I had a knife, and Rose was unarmed.

“Rose!”

I hurled the knife towards her, and it rattled across the floor. She groped out wildly as I swung myself off the chair, fell to loosen my other arm. Rose caught the handle in skittering fingers, and brought it around in an arc, just as I tore my other hand free. I heard the revolver crack as the blade sank into Gina’s neck, the bullets ricocheting off the floor. 

Gina sagged over Rose, blood gushing from her throat.

I tore at the ropes holding me and crawled across the floor, cursing as my knee knocked and crashed against the floor. I grabbed Gina’s shoulders, hauled her off and let her fall back on the floor. There was a look of faint surprise in her face, even as the last blood bubbled around the knife lodged in her neck. 

Rose struggled to sit up, soaked in blood and shaking. “Forgot the second gun,” she said, bracing her hands on the floor, turning herself to face me. She reached out one hand, then the other to clasp my arms. “Always remember the second gun.” She gave a small, quivering laugh, looked at me. “We’re done.”

“We’re done,” I agreed, hardly able to believe it.

Without the head of the serpent, the nest would fall apart.

Rose leaned up to claim a kiss, cautious, as if I’d give up on her now that we were finished with the Royles. The dame had been the best kind of trouble, and she’d gotten me where I needed to be. I pulled her closer, one hand going into her hair. There was so much blood there already, no one was going to notice a little bit more. 

She brought one hand up to touch my cheek, covering the cut Gina had given me.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper.

“It was the only way to convince her,” I said, covering her hand with mine.

She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. “Not for that,” she said.

I stared at her. “For what then?” I demanded.

She took a breath. “I can’t walk out of here with you, Johnny,” she said.

“Don’t talk crazy,” I snapped. “You won’t get put away. You brought her down. No one needs to know about anything else. You saved my damned life, you stupid broad. No one can say a damn thing against you.”

She laughed, but it was small and broken. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not that, Johnny. God, I wish it was.” Her hand was trembling against my cheek. It was cold. “Look down.”

I didn’t need to. Not seeing the look on her face. Not feeling the chill in her skin.

I did all the same. 

Some of the bullets had ricocheted off the floor.

One of them hadn’t. 

Not all the blood on her clothes was Gina’s.

“Shit!” I covered the wound with my hand, pressing against her belly, sinking my finger into the hole to stem the bleeding. “We’ll get you help. You’ll be okay.”

She caught my face in both her cold, wet hands. “No,” she whispered, “I won’t. We’re too far out for help to get here in time.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to end this way, Johnny. I swear I didn’t.”

“I know,” I said, but my voice was cracking. She was already so cold. She didn’t have long left. I pulled off my jacket, wrapped it around her as snug as I could, and wrapped her up in my arms. She didn’t deserve to go out cold and alone, not when she deserved so much better.

“I want to be brave,” she whispered, leaning heavily against my chest. 

“You are, doll,” I said, or I tried to say. The damn words were catching in my throat and my eyes were hot and wet. “Bravest damn broad I ever met.”

She managed to smile. “Liar.”

I shook my head. “Bravest,” I told her, stroking blood-sticky hair back from her cheek. “I never saw a dame who played so many people, and looked cool as ice doing it.”

She looked up at me. “Want to know a secret?” she whispered.

“Sure.”

“I was always scared,” she confided in a whisper. “Always. Just had to pretend. Had to fool everyone. Had to get it done.” Her voice broke and she gave a small sob. “My daddy is going to be so sad.”

I rocked her closer. “Don’t you worry, baby, don’t you worry,” I whispered, pressing kisses to her forehead. “I’ll tell him what a tough girl you were. I’ll tell him you saved the city. I’ll tell him just how brave you were.”

“Johnny,” she whispered, clasping blindly at my arm. “I don’t wanna go.”

“I know.” 

It was barely words anymore. 

I couldn’t speak.

All I could do was hold her, and stroke her hair and watch as the only girl I had ever given a damn about slipped away through my fingers like water.

 

__________________________________________

 

Shepherd and his boys showed up bang on eight.

Rose was gone by then, sleeping in my arms.

Shepherd took one look and told the squad to back the hell off. He didn’t ask any questions, not even in the days that followed. He knew enough from looking at me to know I would hit him soon as listen to him. 

First thing I did as soon as she was taken from me was to go and find her old man. He had to know that he had one hell of a daughter. The words didn’t get any easier to say, and he didn’t say anything, just shook my hand, thanked me, closed the door. I heard his scream when I was three steps away. I didn’t want to hear, and he didn’t want me to either.

I went back to the hotel and stayed there. The room was paid up, and it was the last place I’d seen her that didn’t have blood and death all over it. She’d left a shawl, and a bottle of her perfume in the bathroom. It was dumb and pointless, but I sprayed some of it onto the shawl and for a second, I could imagine she was about to walk back in the door. 

Bennie called that night. Shepherd must have told him, because he was quiet, and didn’t once ask when he’d be coming home. I touched the shawl with shaking fingers. He would have loved her, and the dumb broad would have spoiled him.

Soon was all I could tell him. Real soon. 

The funeral was two days later.

Shepherd came to find me himself.

I hadn’t shaved in days and I didn’t give a damn, but I couldn’t let her down. She’d saved my ass more times than I could count. I couldn’t let her get put in the ground without showing my respects. 

It was raining. 

Shepherd had arranged a chair for me, and he stood behind it, holding an umbrella above both of us, and put his hand on my shoulder. Rose’s father was standing on the other side of the grave. We looked at one another as they laid the coffin in the ground, and he nodded to me, like it wasn’t my damned fault she was resting in the dirt.

There weren’t many people there.

She didn’t have many friends.

Most of the people she had socialised with were up the river now, thanks to her.

The small crowd scattered, and I still sat, watching as the piled the earth back into the hole that had swallowed her. Shepherd walked away to give me a little time. The son of a bitch knew. I didn’t know how, but he knew. 

“She deserves more than this.”

I didn’t turn at King’s voice. “You have no idea.”

He stepped alongside me, watching the men filling in the grave. “I think I do, Gold,” he said quietly. “I recruited her.”

I sat in silence for a moment, then looked up at him. “She was yours?”

“For the last four years,” he said quietly. “You weren’t the only one with a vendetta against the Royles. She was just smart enough to play the long game.” He sighed. “It shouldn’t have ended this way.”

“Damn right.” I tightened my hand around the handle of my cane. “Did you know she offed Astor?”

“I knew everything she was doing,” he replied quietly. “But it couldn’t come from me.” He sank his hands into his pockets. “I have to be impartial. She was always meant to end up as a source for you, John, but then you got kicked off the force, and everything had to be pushed back until you were ready.”

“Until I was ready,” I echoed. “Ready to see a smart young girl get herself killed?”

He looked down at me. “She signed on to do a job,” he said. He looked older than I remembered, and tired. “She did that job. She knew the risks that came with it, just the same as Astor. She knew what she could lose.” He hesitated, then said quietly, “The Royles had a hand in her mother’s death, when she was younger. They had no idea what they started when they made an enemy of Rose French.”

“She said she would go all the way,” I said. “She shouldn’t have been put in a position where that was a possibility.”

“Do you think anyone could have stopped her?” he asked. “Like anyone could have stopped you?”

He was right. 

Rose and I were two of a kind, and I knew for a fact I’d never find another like her.

I pushed myself onto my feet, leaning heavily on my stick.

“If you don’t mind, King,” I said, turning my back, “I don’t think I want to see you anymore. And I sure as hell don’t want you sullying her grave.”

He exhaled. “I’m sorry, Gold,” he said. “You weren’t meant to care.”

“And she wasn’t meant to die, saving my life,” I said. “And yet, here we are.”

Without looking back, I headed down in the direction of the cars near the front gates. There was a different car waiting for me, not one of the black convoy we’d arrived in, and Shepherd was standing beside it, and he wasn’t alone.

“Bennie.” 

I held out an arm and my boy ran to me, straight into my arms, and hugged me as if his life depended on it. I wrapped an arm around him, held him tight and close. I’d lost one person I loved, and I knew I wasn’t going to ever let anyone steal away the only one I had left.

“Let’s go home,” he whispered.

“Home,” I agreed, holding him tight.


End file.
